^    '^'\ 

5?-/' 
B 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

GIFT  OF 

Estate  of 
Jean  Howard  McDuffie 


A 


"VIRGINIBUS  PUERISQUE" 

^;^  OTHEIi  T^TETiS 


''Virginibus 
Puerisque" 

AND    OTHER    PAPERS 


By 

ROBERT   LOUIS   STEVENSON 


MEDALLION   EDITION 


New  York 
Current  Literature  Publishing  Co. 
1909 


1^^ 


D4y  T>ear  WILLIAM  ERNEST  HENLEY. 

E  are  all  busy  in  this  world  building 
Towers  of^abel;  and  the  child  of 
our  imaginations  is  always  a  change- 
ling when  it  comes  from  m^rse.  This  is  not 
only  true  in  the  greatest^  as  of  wars  and  fo- 
lios, but  in  the  least  also,  like  the  trifling  vol- 
ume inyour  hand.  Thus  I  began  to  write  these 
papers  with  a  definite  end :  I  was  to  be  the  Ad- 
vocatus,  not  I  hope  Diaboli,  Z?w/ Juventutis; 
I  was  to  state  temperately  the  beliefs  of  youth 
as  opposed  to  the  contentions  of  age;  to  go  over 
all  the  field  where  the  two  differ,  and  produce 
at  last  a  little  volume  of  special  pleadings 
which  I  might  call,  without  misnomer ,  Life  at 
Twenty-five,  ^ut  times  kept  changing,  and  I 
shared  in  the  change.  I  clung  hard  to  that  en^ 
trancing  age;  but,  with  the  best  will,  no  man 
can  be  twenty-five  for  ever.  The  old,  ruddy 
convictions  deserted  me,  and,  along  with 
them,  the  style  that  fits  their  presentation 
and  defence,  I  saw,  and  indeed  my  friends 

V 

332 


DEDICA  TION 

informed  me,  that  the  game  was  up.  <tA  good 
part  of  the  volume  would  answer  to  the  long- 
proje^ed  title;  but  the  shadows  of  the  pris- 
on-house are  on  the  rest. 

It  is  good  to  have  been  young  in  youth  and, 
as  years  go  on,  to  grow  older.  {Many  are  al- 
ready old  before  they  are  throttgh  their  teens; 
but  to  travel  deliberately  through  one's  ages 
is  to  get  the  heart  out  of  a  liberal  education. 
Times  change,  opinions  vary  to  their  opposite, 
and  still  this  world  appears  a  brave  gymna- 
sium, full  of  sea-bathing,  and  horse  exercise, 
and  bracing,  manly  virtues;  and  what  can  be 
more  encouraging  than  to  find  the  friend  who 
was  welcome  at  one  age,  still  welcome  at  an- 
other? Our  affections  and  beliefs  are  wiser 
than  we;  the  best  that  is  in  us  is  better  than 
we  can  understand;  for  it  is  grounded  beyond 
experience,  and  guides  us,  blindfold  but  safe^ 
from  one  age  on  to  another. 

These  papers  are  like  milestones  on  the  way- 
side of  my  life;  and  as  I  look  back  in  mem- 
ory, there  is  hardly  a  stage  of  that  distance 
but  I  see  you  present  with  advice,  reproof, 
and  praise.  [Meanwhile,  many  things  have 
changed,  you  and  I  among  the  rest;  but  I  hope 


DEDICATION 

that  our  sympathy ,  founded  on  the  love  of  our 
art.andnourishedby  mutual  assistance, shall 
survive  these  little  revolutions  undiminished, 
and,  with  God's  help,  unite  us  to  the  end. 
Davos  Platz,  1881  %  L.  S. 


FIRST  COLLECTED  EDITION 

C.  Kegan  Paul  &Co.,  London,  1881 

Originally  Published 

I  Cornhill  Magazine,  i,  August,  1876. 
Cornhill  Magazine,  iii,  February,  1877. 
Cornhill  Magazine,  iv,  May,  1879. 

II  Cornhill  Magazine,  March,  1878. 

III  Cornhill  Magazine,  July,  1877. 

IV  Macmillan's  Magazine,         May,  1874. 

V  Cornhill  Magazine,  April,  1878. 

VI  London  Magazine,  May  11,  1878. 

VII  Cornhill  Magazine,  July,  1878. 

VIII  In  First  Colleded  Edition,  i88k 

IX  Cornhill  Magazine,     September,  1878. 

X  Cornhill  Magazine,  June,  1876. 

XI  London  Magazine,  May  4,  1876. 

XII  London  Magazine,  April  27,  1878. 


vm 


CONTENTS 

I    ' 

'  ViRGINIBUS  PUERISQUE  " 

Chapter  I 

I 

Chapter  II 

23 

Chapter  III  :  On  Falling  in  Love 

40 

Chapter  IV  :  Truth  of  Intercourse 

58 

II 

Crabbed  Age  and  Youth 

75 

III 

An  Apology  For  Idlers 

99 

IV 

Ordered  South 

118 

V 

^s  Triplex 

141 

VI 

El  Dorado 

158 

VII 

The  English  Admirals 

164 

VIII 

Some  Portraits  by  Raeburn 

188 

IX 

Child's  Play 

204 

X 

Walking  Tours 

225 

XI 

Pan's  Pipes 

241 

XII 

A  Plea  For  Gas  Lamps 

249 

b 


"VIRGINIBUS  PUERISQUE" 

I 

ilTH  the  single  exception  of  Falstaff, 
all  Shakespeare's  characters  are 
what  we  call  marrying  men.  Mercu- 
tio,  as  he  was  own  cousin  to  Benedick  and 
Biron,  would  have  come  to  the  same  end  in 
the  long  run.  Even  lago  had  a  wife,  and,  what 
is  far  stranger,  he  was  jealous.  People  like 
Jacques  and  the  Fool  in  Lear,  although  we 
can  hardly  imagine  they  would  ever  marry, 
kept  single  out  of  a  cynical  humour  or  for  a 
broken  heart,  and  not,  as  we  do  nowadays, 
from  a  spirit  of  incredulity  and  preference 
for  the  single  state.  For  that  matter,  if  you 
turn  to  George  Sand's  French  version  of  ^s 
You  Like  It  (and  1  think  1  can  promise  you 
will  like  it  but  Httle),  you  will  find  Jacques 
marries  Celia  just  as  Orlando  marries  Rosa- 
lind. 

At  least  there  seems  to  have  been  much 
less  hesitation   over  marriage  in   Shakes- 


*'  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

peare's  days;  and  what  hesitation  there  was 
was  of  a  laughing  sort,  and  not  much  more 
serious,  one  way  or  the  other,  than  that  of 
Panurge.  In  modern  comedies  the  heroes 
are  mostly  of  Benedick's  way  of  thinking, 
but  twice  as  much  in  earnest,  and  not  one 
quarter  so  confident.  And  I  take  this  diffi- 
dence as  a  proof  of  how  sincere  their  terror 
is.  They  know  they  are  only  human  after 
all;  they  know  what  gins  and  pitfalls  lie 
about  their  feet;  and  how  the  shadow  of 
matrimony  waits,  resolute  and  awful,  at  the 
cross-roads.  They  would  wish  to  keep  their 
liberty;  but  if  that  may  not  be,  why,  God's 
will  be  done !  *  *  What,  are  you  afraid  of  mar- 
riage?" asks  Cecile,  in  Maitre  Guerin.  "  Oh, 
mon  Dieu,  non!"  replies  Arthur;  "I  should 
take  chloroform."  They  look  forward  to  mar- 
riage much  in  the  same  way  as  they  prepare 
themselves  for  death :  each  seems  inevitable; 
each  is  a  great  Perhaps,  and  a  leap  into  the 
dark,  for  which,  when  a  man  is  in  the  blue 
devils,  he  has  specially  to  harden  his  heart. 
That  splendid  scoundrel,  Maxime  de  Trail- 
les,  took  the  news  of  marriages  much  as  an 
old  man  hears  the  deaths  of  his  contempor- 


"  VIRGINIB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

aries.  *'C'estdesesperant,"  he  cried,  throw- 
ing himself  down  in  the  arm-chair  at  Ma- 
dame Schontz's;  ''c'est  desesperant,  nous 
nous  marions  tous!"  Every  marriage  was 
like  another  gray  hair  on  his  head;  and  the 
jolly  church  bells  seemed  to  taunt  him  with 
his  fifty  years  and  fair  round  belly. 

The  fact  is,  we  are  much  more  afraid  of 
life  than  our  ancestors,  and  cannot  find  it 
in  our  hearts  either  to  marry  or  not  to  marry. 
Marriage  is  terrifying,  but  so  is  a  cold  and 
forlorn  old  age.  The  friendships  of  men  are 
vastly  agreeable,  but  they  are  insecure.  You 
know  all  the  time  that  one  friend  will  marry 
and  put  you  to  the  door;  a  second  accept 
a  situation  in  China,  and  become  no  more 
to  you  than  a  name,  a  reminiscence,  and  an 
occasional  crossed  letter,  very  laborious  to 
read ;  a  third  will  take  up  with  some  religious 
crotchet  and  treat  you  to  sour  looks  thence- 
forward. So,  in  one  way  or  another,  life 
forces  men  apart  and  breaks  up  the  goodly 
fellowships  forever.  The  very  flexibility  and 
ease  which  make  men's  friendships  so  agree- 
able while  they  endure,  make  them  the  easier 
to  destroy  and  forget.  And  a  man  who  has 

3 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE'' 

afewfriends,  oronewhohasadozen  (if  there 
be  anyone  so  wealthy  on  this  earth),  can- 
not forget  on  how  precarious  a  base  his  hap- 
piness reposes;  and  how  by  a  stroke  or  two 
of  fate — a  death,  a  few  light  words,  a  piece 
of  stamped  paper,  a  woman's  bright  eyes — 
he  may  be  left,  in  a  month,  destitute  of  all. 
[Marriage  is  certainly  a  perilous  remedy.  In- 
stead of  on  two  or  three,  you  stake  your 
happiness  on  one  life  only.  But  still,  as  the 
bargain  is  more  exphcit  and  complete  on 
your  part,  it  is  more  so  on  the  other;  and 
you  have  not  to  fear  so  many  contingencies; 
it  is  not  every  wind  that  can  blow  you  from 
your  anchorage;  and  so  long  as  Death  with- 
holds his  sickle,  you  will  always  have  a 
friend  at  home.  People  who  share  a  cell  in 
the  Bastile,  or  are  thrown  together  on  an 
uninhabited  isle,  if  they  do  not  immediately 
fall  to  fisticuffs,  will  find  some  possible 
ground  of  compromise.  They  will  learn  each 
other's  ways  and  humours,  so  as  to  know 
where  they  must  go  warily,  and  where  they 
may  lean  their  whole  weight.  The  dis- 
cretion of  the  first  years  becomes  the  settled 
habit  of  the  last;  and  so^  with  wisdom  and 


"  VIRGINIB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

patience,  two  lives  may  grow  indissolubly 
into  one. 

But  marriage,  if  comfortable,  is  not  at  all 
heroic.  It  certainly  narrows  and  damps  the 
spirits  of  generous  men.  In  marriage,  a  man 
becomes  slack  and  selfish,  and  undergoes 
a  fatty  degeneration  of  his  moral  being.  It 
is  not  only  when  Lydgate  misallies  himself 
with  Rosamond  Vincy,-  but  when  Ladislaw 
marries  above  him  with  Dorothea,  that  this 
may  be  exemplified.  The  air  of  the  fireside 
withers  out  all  the  fine  wildings  of  the  hus- 
band's heart.  He  is  so  comfortable  and  happy 
that  he  begins  to  prefer  comfort  and  happi- 
ness to  everything  else  on  earth,  his  wife 
included.  Yesterday  he  would  have  shared 
his  last  shilling;  to-day  ''his  first  duty  is  to 
his  family,"  and  is  fulfilled  in  large  measure 
by  laying  down  vintages  and  husbanding 
the  health  of  an  invaluable  parent.  Twenty 
years  ago  this  man  was  equally  capable  of 
crime  or  heroism;  now  he  is  fit  for  neither. 
His  soul  is  asleep,  and  you  may  speak  with- 
out constraint;  you  will  not  wake  him.  It 
is  not  for  nothing  that  Don  Quixote  was  a 
bachelor  and  Marcus  Aurelius  married  ill. 

5 


«  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

For  women,  there  is  less  of  this  danger. 
Marriage  is  of  so  much  use  to  a  woman, 
opens  out  to  her  so  much  more  of  hfe,  and 
puts  her  in  the  way  of  so  much  more  free- 
dom and  usefulness,  that,  whether  she  marry 
ill  or  well,  she  can  hardly  miss  some  bene- 
fit. It  is  true,  however,  that  some  of  the 
merriest  and  most  genuine  of  women  are 
old  maids;  and  that  those  old  maids,  and 
wives  who  ^re  unhappily  married,  have 
often  most  of  the  true  motherly  touch.  And 
this  would  seem  to  show,  even  for  women, 
some  narrowing  influence  in  comfortable 
married  life.  But  the  rule  is  none  the  less 
certain:  if  you  wish  the  pick  of  men  and 
women,  take  a  good  bachelor  and  a  good 
wife. 

I  am  often  filled  with  wonder  that  so 
many  marriages  are  passably  successful,  and 
so  few  come  to  open  failure,  the  more  so  as 
I  fail  to  understand  the  principle  on  which 
people  regulate  their  choice.  I  see  women 
marrying  indiscriminately  with  staring  bur- 
gesses and  ferret-faced,  white-eyed  boys, 
and  men  dwell  in  contentment  with  noisy 
scullions,  or  taking  into  their  lives  acidu- 
6 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

lous  vestals.  It  is  a  common  answer  to  say 
the  good  people  marry  because  they  fall  in 
love;  and  of  course  you  may  use  and  mis- 
use a  word  as  much  as  you  please,  if  you 
have  the  world  along  with  you.  But  love  is 
at  least  a  somewhat  hyperbolical  expression 
for  such  lukewarm  preference.  It  is  not  here, 
anyway,  that  Love  employs  his  golden 
shafts;  he  cannot  be  said,  with  any  fitness 
of  language,  to  reign  here  and  revel.  In- 
deed, if  this  be  love  at  all,  it  is  plain  the 
poets  have  been  fooHng  with  mankind  since 
the  foundation  of  the  world.  And  you- have 
only  to  look  these  happy  couples  in  the 
face,  to  see  they  have  never  been  in  love, 
or  in  hate,  or  in  any  other  high  passion,  all 
their  days.  When  you  see  a  dish  of  fruit  at 
dessert,  you  sometimes  set  your  affections 
upon  one  particular  peach  or  nectarine, 
watch  it  with  some  anxiety  as  it  comes 
round  the  table,  and  feel  quite  a  sensible 
disappointment  when  it  is  taken  by  some 
one  else.  I  have  used  the  phrase  "  high  pas- 
sion." Well,  I  should  say  this  was  about  as 
high  a  passion  as  generally  leads  to  mar- 
riage.  One  husband  hears   after  marriage 

7 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

that  some  poor  fellow  is  dying  of  his  wife's 
love.  "What  a  pity!"  he  exclaims;  "you 
know  I  could  so  easily  have  got  another!" 
And  yet  that  is  a  very  happy  union.  Or  again : 
A  young  man  was  telling  me  the  sweet 
story  of  his  loves.  "  1  like  it  well  enough  as 
long  as  her  sisters  are  there,"  said  this 
amorous  swain;  "but  I  don't  know  what 
to  do  when  we're  alone."  Once  more:  A 
married  lady  was  debating  the  subject  with 
another  lady.  "You  know,  dear,"  said  the 
first,  "  after  ten  years  of  marriage,  if  he  is 
nothing  else,  your  husband  is  always  an  old 
friend."  "I  have  many  old  friends,"  re- 
turned the  other,  "but  I  prefer  them  to  be 
nothing  more."  "Oh,  perhaps  I  \x\\^\  pre- 
fer that  also!"  There  is  a  common  note  in 
these  three  illustrations  of  the  modern  idyll; 
and  it  must  be  owned  the  god  goes  among 
us  with  a  limping  gait  and  blear  eyes.  You 
wonder  whether  it  was  so  always ;  whether 
desire  was  always  equally  dull  and  spirit- 
less, and  possession  equally  cold.  1  cannot 
help  fancying  most  people  make,  ere  they 
marry,  some  such  table  of  recommenda- 
tions as  Hannah  Godwin  wrote  to  her 
8 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

brother  William  anent  her  friend,  Miss  Gay. 
It  is  so  charmingly  comical,  and  so  pat  to 
the  occasion,  that  I  must  quote  a  few 
phrases.  "  The  young  lady  is  in  every  sense 
formed  to  make  one  of  your  disposition 
really  happy.  She  has  a  pleasing  voice,  with 
which  she  accompanies  her  musical  instru- 
ment with  judgment.  She  has  an  easy  po- 
liteness in  her  manners,  neither  free  nor  re- 
served. She  is  a  good  housekeeper  and  a 
good  economist,  and  yet  of  a  generous  dis- 
position. As  to  her  internal  accomplish- 
ments, I  have  reason  to  speak  still  more 
highly  of  them:  good  sense  without  vanity, 
a  penetrating  judgment  without  a  disposi- 
tion to  satire,  with  about  as  much  religion 
as  my  William  likes,  struck  me  with  a  wish 
that  she  was  my  William's  wife."  That  is 
about  the  tune:  pleasing  voice,  moderate 
good  looks,  unimpeachable  internal  accom- 
plishments after  the  style  of  the  copybook, 
with  about  as  much  religion  as  my  William 
likes;  and  then,  with  all  speed,  to  church. 
To  deal  plainly,  if  they  only  married  when 
they  fell  in  love,  most  people  would  die 
unwed;  and  among  the  others,  there  would 

9 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

be  not  a  few  tumultuous  households.  The 
Lion  is  the  King  of  Beasts,  but  he  is  scarcely 
suitable  for  a  domestic  pet.  In  the  same 
way,  1  susped  love  is  rather  too  violent  a 
passion  to  make,  in  all  cases,  a  good  do- 
mestic sentiment.  Like  other  violent  excite- 
ments, it  throws  up  not  only  what  is  best, 
but  what  is  worst  and  smallest,  in  men's 
characters.  Just  as  some  people  are  mali- 
cious in  drink,  or  brawling  and  virulent  un- 
der the  influence  of  religious  feeling,  some 
are  moody,  jealous,  and  exading  when  they 
are  in  love,  who  are  honest,  downright, 
good-hearted  fellows  enough  in  the  every- 
day affairs  and  humours  of  the  world. 

How  then,  seeing  we  are  driven  to  the 
hypothesis  that  people  choose  in  compara- 
tively cold  blood,  how  is  it  that  they  choose 
so  well }  One  is  almost  tempted  to  hint 
that  it  does  not  much  matter  whom  you 
marry;  that,  in  fact,  marriage  is  a  subjec- 
tive affection,  and  if  you  have  made  up 
your  mind  to  it,  and  once  talked  yourself 
fairly  over,  you  could  "pull  it  through" 
with  anybody.  But  even  if  we  take  matri- 
mony at  its  lowest,  even  if  we  regard  it  as 


•*  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

no  more  than  a  sort  of  friendship  recog- 
nised by  the  police,  there  must  be  degrees 
in  the  freedom  and  sympathy  realised,  and 
some  principle  to  guide  simple  folk  in  their 
selection.  Now  what  should  this  principle 
be  ?  Are  there  no  more  definite  rules  than 
are  to  be  found  in  the  Prayer-book  ?  Law 
and  religion  forbid  the  bans  on  the  ground 
of  propinquity  or  consanguinity;  society 
steps  in  to  separate  classes;  and  in  all  this 
most  critical  matter,  has  common  sense, 
has  wisdom,  never  a  word  to  say  ?  In  the 
absence  of  more  magisterial  teaching,  let 
us  talk  it  over  between  friends:  even  a  few 
guesses  may  be  of  interest  to  youths  and 
maidens. 

In  all  that  concerns  eating  and  drinking, 
company,  climate,  and  ways  of  life,  com- 
munity of  taste  is  to  be  sought  for.  It  would 
be  trying,  for  instance,  to  keep  bed  and 
board  with  an  early  riser  or  a  vegetarian. 
In  matters  of  art  and  intellect,  I  believe  it  is 
of  no  consequence.  Certainly  it  is  of  none  in 
the  companionships  of  men,  who  will  dine 
more  readily  with  one  who  has  a  good 
heart,  a  good  cellar,  and  a  humorous  tongue. 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

tha-n  with  another  who  shares  all  their  fa- 
vourite hobbies  and  is  melancholy  withal.  If 
your  wife  likes  Tupper,  that  is  no  reason 
why  you  should  hang  your  head.  She  thinks 
with  the  majority,  and  has  the  courage  of 
her  opinions.  1  have  always  suspected  pub- 
lic taste  to  be  a  mongrel  product  out  of  af- 
fectation by  dogmatism;  and  felt  sure,  if 
you  could  only  find  an  honest  man  of  no 
special  literary  bent,  he  would  tell  you  he 
thought  much  of  Shakespeare  bombastic 
and  most  absurd,  and  all  of  him  written  in 
very  obscure  English  and  wearisome  to 
read.  And  not  long  ago  1  was  able  to  lay 
by  my  lantern  in  content,  for  I  found  the 
honest  man.  He  was  a  fellow  of  parts, 
quick,  humorous,  a  clever  painter,  and  with 
an  eye  for  certain  poetical  effeds  of  sea  and 
ships.  I  am  not  much  of  a  judge  of  that 
kind  of  thing,  but  a  sketch  of  his  comes 
before  me  sometimes  at  night.  How  strong, 
supple,  and  living  the  ship  seems  upon  the 
billows!  With  what  a  dip  and  rake  she 
shears  the  flying  sea!  I  cannot  fancy  the 
man  who  saw  this  effed,  and  took  it  on 
the  wing  with  so  much  force  and  spirit. 


12 


^  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

was  what  you  call  commonplace  in  the  last 
recesses  of  the  heart.  And  yet  he  thought, 
and  was  not  ashamed  to  have  it  known  of 
him,  that  Ouida  was  better  in  every  way 
than  William  Shakespeare.  If  there  were 
more  people  of  his  honesty,  this  would  be 
about  thestaple  of  lay  criticism.  It  is  not  taste 
that  is  plentiful,  but  courage  that  is  rare. 
And  what  have  we  in  place  ?  How  many, 
who  think  no  otherwise  than  the  young 
painter,  have  we  not  heard  disbursing  sec- 
ond-hand hyperboles  .^  Have  you  never 
turned  sick  at  heart,  O  best  of  critics !  when 
some  of  your  own  sweet  adje(5lives  were 
returned  on  you  before  a  gaping  audience  ? 
Enthusiasm  about  art  is  become  a  function 
of  the  average  female  being,  which  she  per- 
forms with  precision  and  a  sort  of  haunting 
sprightliness,  like  an  ingenious  and  well- 
regulated  machine.  Sometimes,  alas!  the 
calmest  man  is  carried  away  in  the  torrent, 
bandies  adjedives  with  the  best,  and  out- 
Herods  Herod  for  some  shameful  moments. 
When  you  remember  that,  you  will  be 
tempted  to  put  things  strongly,  and  say 
you  will  marry  no  one  who  is  not  like 

»3 


"  VIRGINIB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

George  the  Second,  and  cannot  state  open- 
ly a  distaste  for  poetry  and  painting. 

The  word  ''fads"  is,  in  some  ways,  cru- 
cial. 1  have  spoken  with  Jesuits  and  Ply- 
mouth Brethren,  mathematicians  and  poets, 
dogmatic  republicans  and  dear  old  gentle- 
men in  bird's-eye  neckcloths;  and  each  un- 
derstood the  word  "fads"  in  an  occult 
sense  of  his  own.  Try  as  1  might,  1  could 
get  no  nearer  the  principle  of  their  division. 
What  was  essential  to  them,  seemed  to  me 
trivial  or  untrue.  We  could  come  to  no  com- 
promise as  to  what  was,  or  what  was  not, 
important  in  the  life  of  man.  Turn  as  we 
pleased,  we  all  stood  back  to  back  in  a  big 
ring,  and  saw  another  quarter  of  the  heavens, 
with  different  mountain-tops  along  the  sky- 
line and  different  constellations  overhead. 
We  had  each  of  us  some  whimsy  in  the 
brain,  which  we  believed  more  than  any- 
thing else,  and  which  discoloured  all  experi- 
ence to  its  own  shade.  How  would  you  have 
people  agree,  when  one  is  deaf  and  the  other 
blind.?  Now  this  is  where  there  should  be 
community  between  man  and  wife.  They 
should  be  agreed  on  their  catchword  in 
•4 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

*'fads  of  religion,"  or  ''fa6ls  of  science,''  or 
''society,  my  dear'';  for  without  such  an 
agreement  all  intercourse  is  a  painful  strain 
upon  the  mind.  ''About  as  much  religion 
as  my  William  likes,"  in  short,  that  is  what 
is  necessary  to  make  a  happy  couple  of  any 
William  and  his  spouse.  For  there  are  dif- 
ferences which  no  habit  nor  affedion  can 
reconcile,  and  the  Bohemian  must  not  in- 
termarry with  the  Pharisee.  Imagine  Con- 
suelo  as  Mrs.  Samuel  Budget,  the  wife  of 
the  successful  merchant!  The  best  of  men 
and  the  best  of  women  may  sometimes  live 
together  all  their  lives,  and,  for  want  of 
some  consent  on  fundamental  questions, 
hold  each  other  lost  spirits  to  the  end. 

A  certain  sort  of  talent  is  almost  indispen- 
sable for  people  who  would  spend  years 
together  and  not  bore  themselves  to  death. 
But  the  talent,  like  the  agreement,  must  be 
for  and  about  life.  To  dwell  happily  to- 
gether, they  should  be  versed  in  the  nice- 
ties of  the  heart,  and  born  with  a  faculty 
for  willing  compromise.  The  woman  must 
be  talented  as  a  woman,  and  it  will  not 
much  matter  although  she  is  talented  in 

«5 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

nothing  else.  She  must  know  her  metier  de 
femme,  and  have  a  fine  touch  for  the  affec- 
tions. And  it  is  more  important  that  a  per- 
son should  be  a  good  gossip,  and  talk 
pleasantly  and  smartly  of  common  friends 
and  the  thousand  and  one  nothings  of  the 
day  and  hour,  than  that  she  should  speak 
with  the  tongues  of  men  and  angels;  for  a 
while  together  by  the  fire,  happens  more 
frequently  in  marriage  than  the  presence  of 
a  distinguished  foreigner  to  dinner.  That 
people  should  laugh  over  the  same  sort  of 
jests,  and  have  many  a  story  of  "grouse  in 
the  gun-room,"  many  an  old  joke  between 
them  which  time  cannot  wither  nor  custom 
stale,  is  a  better  preparation  for  life,  by  your 
leave,  than  many  other  things  higher  and 
better  sounding  in  the  world's  ears.  You 
could  read  Kant  by  yourself,  if  you  wanted; 
but  you  must  share  a  joke  with  some  one 
else.  You  can  forgive  people  who  do  not 
follow  you  through  a  philosophical  disquisi- 
tion; but  to  find  your  wife  laughing  when 
you  had  tears  in  your  eyes,  or  staring  when 
you  were  in  a  fit  of  laughter,  would  go  some 
way  towards  a  dissolution  of  the  marriage. 
i6 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 
I  know  a  woman  who,  from  some  dis^ 
taste  or  disability,  could  never  so  much  as 
understand  the  meaning  of  the  word  poli- 
tics,  and  has  given  up  trying  to  distinguish 
Whigs  from  Tories ;  but  take  her  on  her  own 
politics,  ask  her  about  other  men  or  women 
and  the  chicanery  of  everyday  existence  — 
the  rubs,  the  tricks,  the  vanities  on  which 
life  turns — and  you  will  not  find  many  more 
shrewd,  trenchant,  and  humorous.  Nay,  to 
make  plainer  what  1  have  in  mind,  this  same 
woman  has  a  share  of  the  higher  and  more 
poetical  understanding,  frank  interest  in 
things  for  their  own  sake,  and  enduring 
astonishment  at  the  most  common.  She  is 
not  to  be  deceived  by  custom,  or  made  to 
think  a  mystery  solved  when  it  is  repeated. 
I  have  heard  her  say  she  could  wonder  her- 
self crazy  over  the  human  eyebrow.  Now 
in  a  world  where  most  of  us  walk  very  con- 
tentedly in  the  little  lit  circle  of  their  own 
reason,  and  have  to  be  reminded  of  what 
lies  without  by  specious  and  clamant  ex- 
ceptions—  earthquakes,  eruptions  of  Vesu- 
vius, banjos  floating  in  mid-air  at  a  seance, 
and  the  like  —  a  mind  so  fresh  and  unso- 

«7 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

phisticated  is  no  despicable  gift.  I  will  own 
I  think  it  a  better  sort  of  mind  than  goes 
necessarily  with  the  clearest  views  on  pub- 
lic business.  It  will  wash.  It  will  find  some- 
thing to  say  at  an  odd  moment.  It  has  in  it 
the  spring  of  pleasant  and  quaint  fancies. 
Whereas  I  can  imagine  myself  yawning  all 
night  long  until  my  jaws  ached  and  the  tears 
came  into  my  eyes,  although  my  companion 
on  the  other  side  of  the  hearth  held  the  most 
enlightened  opinions  on  the  franchise  or  the 
ballot. 

The  question  of  professions,  in  as  far  as 
they  regard  marriage,  was  only  interesting 
to  women  until  of  late  days,  but  it  touches 
all  of  us  now.  Certainly,  if  I  could  help  it, 
I  would  never  marry  a  wife  who  wrote. 
The  practice  of  letters  is  miserably  harass- 
ing to  the  mind;  and  after  an  hour  or  two's 
work,  all  the  more  human  portion  of  the 
author  is  extind;  he  will  bully,  backbite, 
and  speak  daggers.  Music,  I  hear,  is  not 
much  better.  But  painting,  on  the  contrary, 
is  often  highly  sedative;  because  so  much 
of  the  labour,  after  your  picture  is  once  be- 
gun, is  almost  entirely  manual,  and  of  that 
18 


-  VIRGINIBUS  PUERISQUE  " 

skilled  sort  of  manual  labour  which  offers  a 
continual  series  of  successes,  and  so  tickles 
a  man,  through  his  vanity,  into  good  hu- 
mour. Alas !  in  letters  there  is  nothing  of  this 
sort.  You  may  write  as  beautiful  a  hand  as 
you  will,  you  have  always  something  else 
to  think  of,  and  cannot  pause  to  notice  your 
loops  and  flourishes;  they  are  beside  the 
mark,  and  the  first  law  stationer  could  put 
you  to  the  blush.  Rousseau,  indeed,  made 
some  account  of  penmanship,  even  made  it 
a  source  of  livelihood,  when  he  copied  out 
the  Helotse  for  dilettante  ladies ;  and  there- 
in showed  that  strange  eccentric  prudence 
which  guided  him  among  so  many  thousand 
follies  and  insanities.  It  would  be  well  for 
all  of  the  genus  irritabile  thus  to  add  some- 
thing of  skilled  labour  to  intangible  brain- 
work.  To  find  the  right  word  is  so  doubtful 
a  success  and  lies  so  near  to  failure,  that 
there  is  no  satisfaction  in  a  year  of  it;  but 
we  all  know  when  we  have  formed  a  letter 
perfectly ;  and  a  stupid  artist,  right  or  wrong, 
is  almost  equally  certain  he  has  found  a  right 
tone  or  a  right  colour,  or  made  a  dexterous 
stroke  with  his  brush.  And,  again,  painters 

19 


"  VIRGIN/BUS  P  UERISQUE  " 

may  work  out  of  doors;  and  the  fresh  air, 
the  deliberate  seasons,  and  the  "  tranquillis- 
ing  influence"  of  the  green  earth,  counter- 
balance the  fever  of  thought,  and  keep  them 
cool,  placable,  and  prosaic. 

A  ship  captain  is  a  good  man  to  marry  if 
it  is  a  marriage  of  love,  for  absences  are  a 
good  influence  in  love  and  keep  it  bright 
and  delicate;  but  he  is  just  the  worst  man 
if  the  feeling  is  more  pedestrian,  as  habit  is 
too  frequently  torn  open  and  the  solder  has 
never  time  to  set.  Men  who  fish,  botanise, 
work  with  the  turning-lathe,  or  gather 
sea-weeds,  will  make  admirable  husbands; 
and  a  little  amateur  painting  in  water-col- 
our shows  the  innocent  and  quiet  mind. 
Those  who  have  a  few  intimates  are  to  be 
avoided  ;  while  those  who  swim  loose,  who 
have  their  hat  in  their  hand  all  along  the 
street,  who  can  number  an  infinity  of  ac- 
quaintances and  are  not  chargeable  with 
any  one  friend,  promise  an  easy  disposition 
and  no  rival  to  the  wife's  influence.  I  will 
not  say  they  are  the  best  of  men,  but  they 
are  the  stuff  out  of  which  adroit  and  capable 
women  manufacture  the  best  of  husbands. 


"  VIRGIN/BUS  PUERISQUE  " 

It  is  to  be  noticed  that  those  who  have 
loved  once  or  twice  already  are  so  much 
the  better  educated  to  a  woman's  hand  ; 
the  bright  boy  of  fiction  is  an  odd  and  most 
uncomfortable  mixture  of  shyness  and 
coarseness,  and  needs  a  deal  of  civilising. 
Lastly  (and  this  is,  perhaps,  the  golden 
rule),  no  woman  should  marry  a  teeto- 
taller, or  a  man  who  does  not  smoke.  It  is 
not  for  nothing  that  this  ''  ignoble  tabagie," 
as  Michelet  calls  it,  spreads  over  all  the 
world.  Michelet  rails  against  it  because  it 
renders  you  happy  apart  from  thought  or 
work;  to  provident  women  this  will  seem 
no  evil  influence  in  married  life.  Whatever 
keeps  a  man  in  the  front  garden,  whatever 
checks  wandering  fancy  and  all  inordinate 
ambition,  whatever  makes  for  lounging  and 
contentment,  makes  just  so  surely  for  do- 
mestic happiness. 

These  notes,  if  they  amuse  the  reader  at 
all,  will  probably  amuse  him  more  when 
he  differs  than  when  he  agrees  with  them; 
at  least  they  will  do  no  harm,  for  nobody 
will  follow  my  advice.  But  the  last  word  is 
of  more  concern.  Marriage  is  a  step  so  grave 


"  VIRGIN/BUS  P  UERISQUE'' 

and  decisive  that  it  attrads  light-headed^ 
variable  men  by  its  very  awfulness.  They 
have  been  so  tried  among  the  inconstant 
squalls  and  currents,  so  often  sailed  for  isl- 
ands in  the  air  or  lain  becalmed  with  burn- 
ing heart,  that  they  will  risk  all  for  solid 
ground  below  their  feet.  Desperate  pilots, 
they  run  their  sea-sick,  weary  bark  upon 
the  dashing  rocks.  It  seems  as  if  marriage 
were  the  royal  road  through  life,  and 
realised,  on  the  instant,  what  we  have  all 
dreamed  on  summer  Sundays  when  the 
bells  ring,  or  at  night  when  we  cannot 
sleep  for  the  desire  of  living.  They  think  it 
will  sober  and  change  them.  Like  those 
who  join  a  brotherhood,  they  fancy  it  needs 
but  an  a6l  to  be  out  of  the  coil  and  clamour 
tor  ever.  But  this  is  a  wile  of  the  devil's. 
To  the  end,  spring  winds  will  sow  dis- 
quietude, passing  faces  leave  a  regret  behind 
them,  and  the  whole  world  keep  calling  and 
calHng  in  their  ears.  For  marriage  is  like  life  in 
this  —  that  it  is  a  field  of  battle,  and  not  a 
bed  of  roses. 


23 


"VIRGINIBUS  PUERISQUE" 
II 

tOPE,  they  say,  deserts  us  at  no  pe- 
riod of  our  existence.  From  first  to 
last,  and  in  the  face  of  smarting  dis- 
illusions, we  continue  to  expe<ft  good  for- 
tune, better  health  and  better  condu6l;  and 
that  so  confidently,  that  we  judge  it  need- 
less to  deserve  them.  I  think  it  improbable 
that  1  shall  ever  write  like  Shakespeare, 
conduct  an  army  like  Hannibal,  or  distin- 
guish myself  like  Marcus  Aurelius  in  the 
paths  of  virtue;  and  yet  I  have  my  by-days, 
hope  prompting,  when  1  am  very  ready  to 
believe  that  I  shall  combine  all  these  vari- 
ous excellences  in  my  own  person,  and  go 
marching  down  to  posterity  with  divine 
honours.  There  is  nothing  so  monstrous 
but  we  can  believe  it  of  ourselves.  About 
ourselves,  about  our  aspirations  and  delin- 
quencies, we  have  dwelt  by  choice  in  a 
delicious  vagueness  from  our  boyhood  up. 

23 


«  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

No  one  will  have  forgotten  Tom  Sawyer's 
aspiration:  *' Ah,  if  he  could  only  die  tem- 
porarily!"  Or,  perhaps,  better  still,  the  in- 
ward resolution  of  the  two  pirates,  that  "  so 
long  as  they  remained  in  that  business, 
their  piracies  should  not  again  be  sullied 
with  the  crime  of  stealing."  Here  we  rec- 
ognise the  thoughts  of  our  boyhood;  and 
our  boyhood  ceased  —  well,  when  ?  —  not, 
1  think,  at  twenty;  nor  perhaps  altogether 
at  twenty-five  ;  nor  yet  at  thirty;  and  pos- 
sibly, to  be  quite  frank,  we  are  still  in  the 
thick  of  that  arcadian  period.  For  as  the  race 
of  man,  after  centuries  of  civilisation,  still 
keeps  some  traits  of  their  barbarian  fathers, 
so  man,  the  individual  is  not  altogether 
quit  of  youth,  when  he  is  already  old  and 
honoured,  and  Lord  Chancellor  of  England. 
We  advance  in  years  somewhat  in  the 
manner  of  an  invading  army  in  a  barren 
land;  the  age  that  we  have  reached,  as  the 
phrase  goes,  we  but  hold  with  an  outpost, 
and  still  keep  open  our  communications 
with  the  extreme  rear  and  first  beginnings 
of  the  march.  There  is  our  true  base;  that 
is  not  only  the  beginning,  but  the  peren- 
24 


"  VIRGINIB  Crs  P  UERISQ  UE'' 

nial  spring  of  our  faculties;  and  grandfather 
William  can  retire  upon  occasion  into  the 
green  enchanted  forest  of  his  boyhood. 

The  unfading  boyishness  of  hope  and  its 
vigorous  irrationality  are  nowhere  better 
displayed  than  in  the  questions  of  condud. 
There  is  a  charader  in  the  Pilgrim's  Prog- 
ress, one  Mr.  Linger-after-Lustv^'Wh  whom 
I  fancy  we  are  all  on  speaking  terms;  one 
famous  among  the  famous  for  ingenuity  of 
hope  up  to  and  beyond  the  moment  of  de- 
feat; one  who,  after  eighty  years  of  con- 
trary experience,  will  believe  it  possible  to 
continue  in  the  business  of  piracy  and  yet 
avoid  the  guilt  of  theft.  Every  sin  is  our  last ; 
every  1st  of  January  a  remarkable  turning 
point  in  our  career.  Any  overt  a6t,  above  all, 
is  felt  to  be  alchemic  in  its  power  to  change. 
A  drunkard  takes  the  pledge;  it  will  be 
strange  if  that  does  not  help  him.  For  how 
many  years  did  Mr.  Pepys  continue  to  make 
and  break  his  little  vows  }  And  yet  I  have  not 
heard  that  he  was  discouraged  in  the  end.  By 
such  steps  we  think  to  fix  a  momentary  res- 
olution ;  as  a  timid  fellow  hies  him  to  the  den- 
tist's while  the  tooth  is  stinging. 

25 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE '' 

But,  alas,  by  planting  a  stake  at  the  top 
of  flood,  you  can  neither  prevent  nor  delay 
the  inevitable  ebb.  There  is  no  hocus-pocus 
in  morality;  and  even  the  **  san6limonious 
ceremony  "  of  marriage  leaves  the  man  un- 
changed. This  is  a  hard  saying,  and  has  an 
air  of  paradox.  For  there  is  something  in 
marriage  so  natural  and  inviting,  that  the 
step  has  an  air  of  great  simplicity  and  ease; 
it  offers  to  bury  forever  many  aching  pre- 
occupations; it  is  to  afford  us  unfailing  and 
familiar  company  through  life;  it  opens  up 
a  smiling  prospect  of  the  blest  and  passive 
kind  of  love,  rather  than  the  blessing  and 
adive;  it  is  approached  not  only  through 
the  delights  of  courtship,  but  by  a  public 
performance  and  repeated  legal  signatures. 
A  man  naturally  thinks  it  will  go  hard  with 
him  if  he  cannot  be  good  and  fortunate  and 
happy  within  such  august  circumvallations. 

And  yet  there  is  probably  no  other  a6l  in 
a  man's  life  so  hot-headed  and  foolhardy  as 
this  one  of  marriage.  For  years,  let  us  sup- 
pose, you  have  been  making  the  most  in- 
different business  of  your  career.  Your  ex- 
perience has  not,  we  may  dare  to  say,  been 
26 


"  VIRGINIB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

more  encouraging  than  Paul's  or  Horace's; 
like  them,  you  have  seen  and  desired  the 
good  that  you  were  not  able  to  accomplish; 
like  them,  you  have  done  the  evil  that  you 
loathed.  You  have  waked  at  night  in  a  hot 
or  a  cold  sweat,  according  to  your  habit  of 
body,  remembering,  with  dismal  surprise, 
your  own  unpardonable  ads  and  sayings. 
You  have  been  sometimes  tempted  to  with- 
draw entirely  from  this  game  of  life;  as  a 
man  who  makes  nothing  but  misses  with- 
draws from  that  less  dangerous  one  of  bil- 
liards. You  have  fallen  back  upon  the 
thought  that  you  yourself  most  sharply 
smarted  for  your  misdemeanors,  or,  in  the 
old,  plaintive  phrase,  that  you  were  no- 
body's enemy  but  your  own.  And  then  you 
have  been  made  aware  of  what  was  beau- 
tiful and  amiable,  wise  and  kind,  in  the 
other  part  of  your  behaviour;  and  it  seemed 
as  if  nothing  could  reconcile  the  contradic- 
tion, as  indeed  nothing  can.  If  you  are  a 
man,  you  have  shut  your  mouth  hard  and 
said  nothing;  and  if  you  are  only  a  man  in 
the  making,  you  have  recognised  that  yours 
was  quite  a  special  case,  and  you  yourself 

27 


«  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

not  guilty  of  your  own  pestiferous  career. 
Granted,  and  with  all  my  heart.  Let  us 
accept  these  apologies ;  let  us  agree  that  you 
are  nobody's  enemy  but  your  own;  let  us 
agree  that  you  are  a  sort  of  moral  cripple, 
impotent  for  good;  and  let  us  regard  you 
with  the  unmingled  pity  due  to  such  a  fate. 
But  there  is  one  thing  to  which,  on  these 
terms  we  can  never  agree:  —  we  can  never 
agree  to  have  you  marry.  What!  you  have 
had  one  life  to  manage,  and  have  failed  so 
strangely,  and  now  can  see  nothing  wiser 
than  to  conjoin  with  it  the  management  of 
some  one  else's.?  Because  you  have  been  un- 
faithful in  a  very  little,  you  propose  yourseh 
to  be  a  ruler  over  ten  cities.  You  strip  your- 
self by  such  a  step  of  all  remaining  consola- 
tions and  excuses.  You  are  no  longer  content 
to  be  your  own  enemy;  you  must  be  your 
wife's  also.  You  have  been  hitherto  in  a 
mere  subaltern  attitude;  dealing  cruel  blows 
about  you  in  life,  yet  only  half  responsible, 
since  you  came  there  by  no  choice  or  move- 
ment of  your  own.  Now,  it  appears,  you 
must  take  things  on  your  own  authority: 
God  made  you,  but  you  marry  yourself;  and 


«  VIR  GIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

for  all  that  your  wife  suffers,  no  one  is  re- 
sponsible but  you.  A  man  must  be  very  cer- 
tain of  his  knowledge  ere  he  undertakes  to 
guide  a  ticket-of-leave  man  through  a  dan- 
gerous pass;  you  have  eternally  missed  your 
way  in  life,  with  consequences  that  you  still 
deplore,  and  yet  you  masterfully  seize  your 
wife's  hand,  and,  blindfold,  drag  her  after 
you  to  ruin.  And  it  is  your  wife,  you  ob- 
serve, whom  you  select.  She,  whose  happi- 
ness you  most  desire,  you  choose  to  be  your 
victim.  You  would  earnestly  warn  her  from 
a  tottering  bridge  or  bad  investment.  If  she 
were  to  marry  some  one  else,  how  you 
would  tremble  for  her  flite !  If  she  were  only 
your  sister,  and  you  thought  half  as  much 
of  her,  how  doubtfully  would  you  entrust 
her  future  to  a  man  no  better  than  yourself! 
Times  are  changed  with  him  who  marries ; 
there  are  no  more  by-path  meadows,  where 
you  may  innocently  linger,  but  the  road  lies 
long  and  straight  and  dusty  to  the  grave. 
Idleness,  which  is  often  becoming  and  even 
wise  in  the  bachelor,  begins  to  wear  a  differ- 
ent aspect  when  you  have  a  wife  to  support. 
Suppose,  after  you  are  married,  one  of  those 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

little  slips  were  to  befall  you.  What  happened 
last  November  might  surely  happen  Febru- 
ary next.  They  may  have  annoyed  you  at  the 
time,  because  they  were  not  what  you  had 
meant;  but  how  will  they  annoy  you  in  the 
future,  and  how  will  they  shake  the  fabric  of 
your  wife's  confidence  and  peace!  A  thou- 
sand things  unpleasing  went  on  in  the  chiar- 
oscuro  of  a  life  that  you  shrank  from  too 
particularly  realising;  you  did  not  care,  in 
those  days,  to  make  a  fetish  of  your  con- 
science; you  would  recognise  your  failures 
with  a  nod,  and  so,  good  day.  But  the  time 
for  these  reserves  is  over.  You  have  wilfully 
introduced  a  witness  into  your  life,  the  scene 
of  these  defeats,  and  can  no  longer  close  the 
mind's  eye  upon  uncomely  passages,  but 
must  stand  up  straight  and  put  a  name  upon 
your  adions.  And  your  witness  is  not  only 
the  judge,  but  the  vi6lim  of  your  sins;  not 
only  can  she  condemn  you  to  the  sharpest 
penalties,  but  she  must  herself  share  feel- 
ingly in  their  endurance.  And  observe,  once 
more,  with  what  temerity  you  have  chosen 
precisely  her  to  be  your  spy,  whose  esteem 
you  value  highest,  and  whom  you  have  al- 
30 


«  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

ready  taught  to  think  you  better  than  you 
are.  You  may  think  you  had  a  conscience, 
and  beheved  in  God;  but  what  is  a  con- 
science, to  a  wife?  Wise  men  of  yore  ere6led 
statues  of  their  deities,  and  consciously  per- 
formed their  part  in  life  before  those  marble 
eyes.  A  god  watched  them  at  the  board,  and 
stood  by  their  bedside  in  the  morning,  when 
they  woke ;  and  all  about  their  ancient  cities, 
where  they  bought  and  sold,  or  where  they 
piped  and  wrestled,  there  would  stand  some 
symbol  of  the  things  that  are  outside  of  man. 
These  were  lessons,  delivered  in  the  quiet 
dialed  of  art,  which  told  their  story  faith- 
fully, but  gently.  It  is  the  same  lesson,  if  you 
will — but  how  harro wingly  taught !  — when 
the  woman  you  respe(5lshallweep  from  your 
unkindness  or  blush  with  shame  at  your 
miscondud.  Poor  girls  in  Italy  turn  their 
painted  Madonnas  to  the  wall:  you  cannot 
set  aside  your  wife.  To  marry  is  to  domes- 
ticate the  Recording  Angel.  Once  you  are 
married,  there  is  nothing  left  for  you,  not 
even  suicide,  but  to  be  good. 

And  goodness  in  marriage  is  a  more  in- 
tricate problem  than  mere  single  virtue;  for 

3» 


"  VIRGIN  IB  us  PUERISQUE  " 

in  marriage  there  are  two  ideals  to  be  real- 
ised. A  girl,  it  is  true,  has  always  lived  in 
a  glass  house  among  reproving  relatives, 
whose  word  was  law;  she  has  been  bred 
up  to  sacrifice  her  judgments  and  take  the 
key  submissively  from  dear  papa;  and  it 
is  wonderful  how  swiftly  she  can  change 
her  tune  into  the  husband's.  Her  morality 
has  been  too  often  an  affair  of  precept  and 
conformity.  But  in  the  case  of  a  bachelor 
who  has  enjoyed  seme  measure  both  of 
privacy  and  freedom,  his  moral  judgments 
have  been  passed  in  some  accordance  with 
his  nature.  His  sins  were  always  sins  in  his 
own  sight;  he  could  then  only  sin  when  he 
did  some  a6l  against  his  clear  convidion; 
the  light  that  he  walked  by  was  obscure, 
but  it  was  single.  Now,  when  two  people 
of  any  grit  and  spirit  put  their  fortunes  into 
one,  there  succeeds  to  this  comparative  cer- 
tainty a  huge  welter  of  competing  jurisdic- 
tions. It  no  longer  matters  so  much  how  life 
appears  to  one;  one  must  consult  another; 
one,  who  may  be  strong,  must  not  offend 
the  other,  who  is  weak.  The  only  weak 
brother  1  am  willing  to  consider  is  (to  make 
32 


**  VIRGIN/BUS  P  UERISQUE  " 

a  bull  for  once)  my  wife.  For  her,  and  for 
her  only,  I  must  waive  my  righteous  judg- 
ments, and  go  crookedly  about  my  life.  How, 
then,  in  such  an  atmosphere  of  compromise, 
to  keep  honour  bright  and  abstain  from  base 
capitulations.?  How  are  you  to  put  aside 
love's  pleadings.?  How  are  you,  the  apostle 
of  laxity,  to  turn  suddenly  about  into  the 
rabbi  of  precision;  and  after  these  years  of 
ragged  praftice,  pose  for  a  hero  to  the  lackey 
who  has  found  you  out.?  In  this  temptation 
to  mutual  indulgence  lies  the  particular  perii 
to  morality  in  married  life.  Daily  they  drop 
a  little  lower  from  the  first  ideal,  and  for  a 
while  continue  to  accept  these  changelings 
with  a  gross  complacency.  At  last  Love 
wakes  and  looks  about  him;  fmds  his  hero 
sunk  into  a  stout  old  brute,  intent  on  brandy 
pawnee;  fmds  his  heroine  divested  of  her 
angel  brightness ;  and  in  the  flash  of  that  first 
disenchantment,  flees  for  ever. 

Again,  the  husband  in  these  unions  is 
usually  a  man,  and  the  wife  commonly 
enough  a  woman ;  and  when  this  is  the  case, 
although  it  makes  the  firmer  marriage,  a 
thick  additional  veil  of  misconception  hangs 

3^ 


"  VIRGINIBUS  PUERISQUE  " 

above  the  doubtful  business.  Women,  I  be- 
lieve, are  somewhat  rarer  than  men;  but 
then,  if  I  were  a  woman  myself,  1  daresay  I 
should  hold  the  reverse;  and  at  least  we  all 
enter  more  or  less  wholly  into  one  or  other 
of  these  camps.  A  man  who  delights  women 
by  his  feminine  perceptions  will  often  scat- 
ter his  admirers  by  a  chance  explosion  of 
the  under  side  of  man ;  and  the  most  mascu- 
hne  and  direct  of  women  will  some  day,  to 
your  dire  surprise,  draw  out  like  a  telescope 
into  successive  lengths  of  personation.  Alas! 
for  the  man,  knowing  her  to  be  at  heart  more 
candid  than  himself,  who  shall  flounder, 
panting,  through  these  mazes  in  the  quest  for 
truth.  The  proper  qualities  of  each  sex  are, 
indeed,  eternallysurprisingtothe  other.  Be- 
tween the  Latin  and  the  Teuton  races  there 
are  similar  divergences,  not  to  be  bridged 
by  the  most  hberal  sympathy.  And  in  the 
good,  plain,  cut-and-dry  explanations  of 
this  Hfe,  which  pass  current  among  us  as 
the  wisdom  of  the  elders,  this  difficulty  has 
been  turned  with  the  aid  of  pious  lies.  Thus, 
when  a  young  lady  has  angelic  features,  eats 
nothing  to  speak  of,  plays  all  day  long  on 
34 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

the  piano,  and  sings  ravishingly  in  church, 
it  requires  a  rough  infidelity,  falsely  called 
cynicism,  to  believe  that  she  may  be  a  little 
devil  after  all.  Yet  so  it  is:  she  may  be  a 
tale-bearer,  a  liar,  and  a  thief;  she  may  have 
a  taste  for  brandy,  and  no  heart.  My  com- 
pliments to  George  Eliot  for  her  Rosamond 
Vincy ;  the  ugly  work  of  satire  she  has  trans- 
muted to  the  ends  of  art,  by  the  companion 
figure  of  Lydgate;  and  the  satire  was  much 
wanted  for  the  education  of  young  men. 
That  doctrine  of  the  excellence  of  women, 
however  chivalrous,  is  cowardly  as  well  as 
false.  It  is  better  to  face  the  fad,  and  know, 
when  you  marry,  that  you  take  into  your 
life  a  creature  of  equal,  if  of  unlike,  frail- 
ties; whose  weak  human  heart  beats  no 
more  tunefully  than  yours. 

But  it  is  the  object  of  a  liberal  education 
not  only  to  obscure  the  knowledge  of  one 
sex  by  another,  but  to  magnify  the  natural 
differences  between  the  two.  Man  is  a  crea- 
ture who  lives  not  upon  bread  alone,  but 
principally  by  catchwords ;  and  the  little  rift 
between  the  sexes  is  astonishingly  widened 
by  simply  teaching  one  set  of  catchwords 

35 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

to  the  girls  and  another  to  the  boys.  To  the 
first,  there  is  shown  but  a  very  small  field 
of  experience,  and  taught  a  very  trenchant 
principle  for  judgment  and  adion;  to  the 
other,  the  world  of  life  is  more  largely  dis- 
played, and  their  rule  of  conduct  is  propor- 
tionally widened.  They  are  taught  to  follow 
different  virtues,  to  hate  different  vices,  to 
place  their  ideal,  even  for  each  other,  in  dif- 
ferent achievements.  What  should  be  the 
result  of  such  a  course?  When  a  horse  has 
run  away,  and  the  two  flustered  people  in 
the  gig  have  each  possessed  themselves  of 
a  rein,  we  know  the  end  of  that  conveyance 
will  be  in  the  ditch.  So,  when  I  see  a  raw 
youth  and  a  green  girl,  fluted  and  fiddled  in 
a  dancing  measure  into  that  most  serious 
contract,  and  setting  out  upon  life's  journey 
with  ideas  so  monstrously  divergent,  1  am 
not  surprised  that  some  make  shipwreck, 
but  that  any  come  to  port.  What  the  boy 
does  almost  proudly,  as  a  manly  peccadillo, 
the  girl  will  shudder  at  as  a  debasing  vice; 
what  is  to  her  the  mere  common  sense  of 
tactics,  he  v/ill  spit  out  of  his  mouth  as 
shameful.  Through  such  a  sea  of  contrarie- 
^6 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE " 

ties  must  this  green  couple  steer  their  way; 
and  contrive  to  love  each  other;  and  to  re- 
spect, forsooth;  and  be  ready,  when  the 
time  arrives,  to  educate  the  little  men  and 
women  who  shall  succeed  to  their  places 
and  perplexities. 

And  yet,  when  all  has  been  said,  the  man 
who  should  hold  back  from  marriage  is  in 
the  same  case  with  him  who  runs  away 
from  battle.  To  avoid  an  occasion  for  our 
virtues  is  a  worse  degree  of  failure  than  to 
push  forward  pluckily  and  make  a  fall.  It  is 
lawful  to  pray  God  that  we  be  not  led  into 
temptation;  but  not  lawful  to  skulk  from 
those  that  come  to  us.  The  noblest  passage 
in  one  of  the  noblest  books  of  this  century, 
is  where  the  old  pope  glories  in  the  trial, 
nay,  in  the  partial  fall  and  but  imperfed 
triumph,  of  the  younger  hero.^  Without 
some  such  manly  note,  it  were  perhaps  bet- 
ter to  have  no  conscience  at  all.  But  there 
is  a  vast  difference  between  teaching  flight, 
and  showing  points  of  peril  that  a  man  may 
march  the  more  warily.  And  the  true  con- 
clusion of  this  paper  is  to  turn  our  back  on 

"Browning's  The  Ring  and  the  Book. 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

apprehensions,  and  embrace  that  shining 
and  courageous  virtue,  Faith.  Hope  is  the 
boy,  a  bhnd,  headlong,  pleasant  fellow,  good 
to  chase  swallows  with  the  salt;  Faith  is  the 
grave,  experienced,  yet  smiling  man.  Hope 
lives  on  ignorance;  open-eyed  Faith  is  built 
upon  a  knowledge  of  our  life,  of  the  tyranny 
of  circumstance  and  the  frailty  of  human 
resolution.  Hope  looks  for  unqualified  suc- 
cess; but  Faith  counts  certainly  on  failure, 
and  takes  honourable  defeat  to  be  a  form  of 
victory.  Hope  is  a  kind  old  pagan;  but  Faith 
grew  up  in  Christian  days,  and  early  learnt 
humility.  In  the  one  temper,  a  man  is  in- 
dignant that  he  cannot  spring  up  in  a  clap 
to  heights  of  elegance  and  virtue;  in  the 
other,  out  of  a  sense  of  his  infirmities,  he  is 
filled  with  confidence  because  a  year  has 
come  and  gone,  and  he  has  still  preserved 
some  rags  of  honour.  In  the  first,  he  expe6ls 
an  angel  for  a  wife ;  in  the  last,  he  knows  that 
she  is  like  himself — erring,  thoughtless,  and 
untrue;  but  like  himself  also,  filled  with  a 
struggling  radiancy  of  better  things,  and 
adorned  with  ineflfedive  qualities.  You  may 
safely  go  to  school  with  hope;  but  ere  you 
38 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

marry,  should  have  learned  the  mingled 
lesson  of  the  world:  that  dolls  are  stuffed 
with  sawdust,  and  yet  are  excellent  play- 
things; that  hope  and  love  address  them- 
selves to  a  perfection  never  realised,  and 
yet,  firmly  held,  become  the  salt  and  staff 
of  life;  that  you  yourself  are  compared  of 
infirmities,  perfed,  you  might  say,  in  im- 
perfedion,  and  yet  you  have  a  something 
in  you  lovable  and  worth  preserving;  and 
that,  while  the  mass  of  mankind  lies  under 
this  scurvy  condemnation,  you  will  scarce 
find  one  but,  by  some  generous  reading, 
will  become  to  you  a  lesson,  a  model,  and 
a  noble  spouse  through  life.  So  thinking, 
you  will  constantly  support  your  own  un- 
worthiness,  and  easily  forgive  the  failings  of 
your  friend.  Nay,  you  will  be  wisely  glad 
that  you  retain  the  sense  of  blemishes;  for 
the  faults  of  married  people  continually  spur 
up  each  of  them,  hour  by  hour,  to  do  bet- 
ter and  to  meet  and  love  upon  a  higher 
ground.  And  ever,  between  the  failures, 
there  will  come  glimpses  of  kind  virtues  to 
encourage  and  console. 


39 


"VIRGINIBUS  PUERISQUE" 
III 

ON  FALLING  IN  LOl^E 

"  Lord,  what  fools  these  mortals  be  !  " 

'HERE  is  only  one  event  in  life  which 
really  astonishes  a  man  and  startles 
him  out  of  his  prepared  opinions. 
Everything  else  befalls  him  very  much  as 
he  expelled.  Event  succeeds  to  event,  with 
an  agreeable  variety  indeed,  but  with  little 
that  is  either  startling  or  intense;  they  form 
together  no  more  than  a  sort  of  background, 
or  running  accompaniment  to  the  man's  own 
refle6tions;  and  he  falls  naturally  into  a  cool, 
curious,  and  smiling  habit  of  mind,  and 
builds  himself  up  in  a  conception  of  life 
which  experts  to-morrow  to  be  after  the 
pattern  of  to-day  and  yesterday.  He  may  be 
accustomed  to  the  vagaries  of  his  friends 
and  acquaintances  under  the  influence  of 
love.  He  may  sometimes  look  forward  to 
40 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

it  for  himself  with  an  incomprehensible  ex- 
pedation.  But  it  is  a  subjed  in  which  neither 
intiiition  nor  the  behaviour  of  others  will 
help  the  philosopher  to  the  truth.  There  is 
probably  nothing  rightly  thought  or  rightly 
written  on  this  matter  of  love  that  is  not  a 
piece  of  the  person's  experience.  I  remem- 
ber an  anecdote  of  a  well-known  French 
theorist,  who  was  debating  a  point  eagerly 
in  his  cenacle.  It  was  objeded  against  him 
that  he  had  never  experienced  love.  Where- 
upon he  arose,  left  the  society,  and  made  it 
a  point  not  to  return  to  it  until  he  considered 
that  he  had  supplied  the  defeft.  *'Now,"  he 
remarked,  on  entering,  "now  I  am  in  a 
position  to  continue  the  discussion."  Per- 
haps he  had  not  penetrated  very  deeply  into 
the  subjed  after  all;  but  the  story  indicates 
right  thinking,  and  may  serve  as  an  apolo- 
gue to  readers  of  this  essay. 

When  at  last  the  scales  fall  from  his  eyes, 
it  is  not  without  something  of  the  nature  of 
dismay  that  the  man  finds  himself  in  such 
changed  conditions.  He  has  to  deal  with 
commanding  emotions  instead  of  the  easy 
dislikes  and   preferences  in  which  he  has 

41 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

hitherto  passed  his  days;  and  he  recognises 
capabilities  for  pain  and  pleasure  of  which 
he  had  not  yet  suspe(fted  the  existence. 
Falling  in  love  is  the  one  illogical  adventure, 
the  one  thing  of  which  we  are  tempted  to 
think  as  supernatural,  in  our  trite  and  reason- 
able world.  The  efifed  is  out  of  all  propor- 
tion with  the  cause.  Two  persons,  neither 
ofthem,  it  may  be,  very  amiableorvery  beau- 
tiful, meet,  speak  a  little,  and  look  a  little  into 
each  other's  eyes.  That  has  been  done  a 
dozen  or  so  of  times  in  the  experience  of 
either  with  no  great  result.  But  on  this  oc- 
casion all  is  different.  They  fall  at  once  into 
that  state  in  which  another  person  becomes 
to  us  the  very  gist  and  centrepoint  of  God's 
creation,  and  demohshes  our  laborious  theo- 
ries with  a  smile;  in  which  our  ideas  are 
so  bound  up  with  the  one  master-thought 
that  even  the  trivial  cares  of  our  own  person 
become  so  many  acts  of  devotion^  and  the 
love  of  life  itself  is  translated  into  a  wish  to 
remain  in  the  same  world  with  so  precious 
and  desirable  a  fellow-creature.  And  all  the 
while  their  acquaintances  look  on  in  stupor, 
and  ask  each  other,  with  almost  passionate 
42 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE " 

emphasis,  what  so-and-so  can  see  in  that 
woman,  or  such-an-one  in  that  man  ?  I  am 
sure,  gentlemen,  I  cannot  tell  you.  For  my 
part,  I  cannot  think  what  the  women  mean. 
It  might  be  very  well,  if  the  Apollo  Belve- 
dere should  suddenly  glow  all  over  into 
life,  and  step  forward  from  the  pedestal 
with  that  godlike  air  of  his.  But  of  the  mis- 
begotten changelings  who  call  themselves 
men,  and  prate  intolerably  over  dinner- 
tables,  I  never  saw  one  who  seemed  worthy 
to  inspire  love — no,  nor  read  of  any,  ex- 
cept Leonardo  da  Vinci,  and  perhaps  Goethe 
in  his  youth.  About  women  1  entertain  a 
somewhat  different  opinion;  but  there,  I 
have  the  misfortune  to  be  a  man. 

There  are  many  matters  in  which  you 
may  waylay  Destiny,  and  bid  him  stand 
and  deliver.  Hard  work,  high  thinking,  ad- 
venturous excitement,  and  a  great  deal 
more  that  forms  a  part  of  this  or  the  other 
person's  spiritual  bill  of  fare,  are  within  the 
reach  of  almost  any  one  who  can  dare  a 
little  and  be  patient.  But  it  is  by  no  means 
in  the  way  of  every  one  to  fall  in  love.  You 
know  the  difficulty  Shakespeare  was  put  in- 

43 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

to  when  Queen  Elizabeth  asked  him  to  show 
Falstaff  in  love.  I  do  not  believe  that  Henry 
Fielding  was  ever  in  love.  Scott,  if  it  were  not 
for  a  passage  or  two  in  Rob  Roy,  would  give 
me  very  much  the  same  effect. These  are  great 
names  and  (what  is  more  to  the  purpose) 
strong,  healthy,  high-strung,  and  generous 
natures,  of  whom  the  reverse  might  have 
been  expelled.  As  for  the  innumerable  army 
of  anaemic  and  tailorish  persons  who  occupy 
the  face  of  this  planet  with  so  much  pro- 
priety, it  is  palpably  absurd  to  imagine  them 
in  any  such  situation  as  a  love  affair.  A  wet 
rag  goes  safely  by  the  fire;  and  if  a  man  is 
blind,  he  cannot  exped  to  be  much  im- 
pressed by  romantic  scenery.  Apart  from 
all  this,  many  lovable  people  miss  each 
other  in  the  world,  or  meet  under  some  un- 
favourable star.  There  is  the  nice  and  critical 
moment  of  declaration  to  be  got  over.  From 
timidity  or  lack  of  opportunity  a  good  half 
of  possible  love  cases  never  get  so  far,  and 
at  least  another  quarter  do  there  cease  and 
determine.  A  very  adroit  person,  to  be  sure, 
manages  to  prepare  the  way  and  out  with 
his  declaration  in  the  nick  of  time.  And  then 
44 


«  VIRGIN/BUS  PUERISQ  UE  " 

ihere  is  a  fine  solid  sort  of  man,  who  goes  on 
from  snub  to  snub;  and  if  he  has  to  declare 
forty  times,  will  continue  imperturbably  de- 
claring, amid  the  astonished  consideration 
of  men  and  angels,  until  he  has  a  favourable 
answer.  I  daresay,  if  one  were  a  woman, 
one  would  like  to  marry  a  man  who  was 
capable  of  doing  this,  but  not  quite  one 
who  had  done  so.  It  is  just  a  little  bit  ab- 
jeA,  and  somehow  just  a  little  bit  gross; 
and  marriages  in  which  one  of  the  parties 
has  been  thus  battered  into  consent  scarcely 
form  agreeable  subjeds  for  meditation.  Love 
should  run  out  to  meet  love  with  open 
arms.  Indeed,  the  ideal  story  is  that  of  two 
people  who  go  into  love  step  for  step,  with 
a  fluttered  consciousness,  like  a  pair  of 
children  venturing  together  into  a  dark 
room.  From  the  first  moment  when  they 
see  each  other,  with  a  pang  of  curiosity, 
through  stage  after  stage  of  growing  pleas- 
ure and  embarrassment,  they  can  read  the 
expression  of  their  own  trouble  in  each 
other's  eyes.  There  is  here  no  declaration 
properly  so  called;  the  feeling  is  so  plainly 
shared,   that  as  soon  as  the  man  knows 

45 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

what  it  is  in  his  own  heart,  he  is  sure  of 
what  it  is  in  the  woman's. 

This  simple  accident  of  falling  in  love  is 
as  beneficial  as  it  is  astonishing.  It  arrests 
the  petrifying  influence  of  years,  disproves 
cold-blooded  and  cynical  conclusions,  and 
awakens  dormant  sensibilities.  Hitherto  the 
man  had  found  it  a  good  policy  to  disbelieve 
the  existence  of  any  enjoyment  which  was 
out  of  his  reach ;  and  thus  he  turned  his  back 
upon  the  strong  sunny  parts  of  nature,  and 
accustomed  himself  to  look  exclusively  on 
what  was  common  and  dull.  He  accepted  a 
prose  ideal,  let  himself  go  blind  of  many 
sympathies  by  disuse ;  and  if  he  were  young 
and  witty,  or  beautiful,  wilfully  forewent 
these  advantages.  He  joined  himself  to  the 
following  of  what,  in  the  old  mythology  of 
love,  was  prettily  called  nonchaloir;  and  in 
an  odd  mixture  of  feelings,  a  fling  of  self- 
respe6l,  a  preference  for  selfish  liberty,  and 
a  great  dash  of  that  fear  with  which  honest 
people  regard  serious  interests,  kept  him- 
self back  from  the  straightforward  course  of 
life  among  certain  seleded  adivities.  And 
now,  all  of  a  sudden,  he  is  unhorsed,  like  St, 
46 


"  VIRGIN/BUS  PUERISQUE'' 

Paul,  from  his  infidel  affedation.  His  heart, 
which  has  been  ticking  accurate  seconds 
for  the  last  year,  gives  a  bound  and  begins 
to  beat  high  and  irregularly  in  his  breast.  It 
seems  as  if  he  had  never  heard  or  felt  or 
seen  until  that  moment;  and  by  the  report 
of  his  memory,  he  must  have  lived  his  past 
life  between  sleep  and  waking,  or  with  the 
preoccupied  attention  of  a  brown  study.  He 
is  pradically  incommoded  by  the  generosity 
of  his  feelings,  smiles  much  when  he  is 
alone,  and  develops  a  habit  of  looking  rather 
blankly  upon  the  moon  and  stars.  But  it  is 
not  at  all  within  the  province  of  a  prose 
essayist  to  give  a  pi(5lure  of  this  hyperboli- 
cal frame  of  mind;  and  the  thing  has  been 
done  already,  and  that  to  admiration.  In 
Adelaide,  in  Tennyson's  Maud,  and  in  some 
of  Heine's  songs,  you  get  the  absolute  ex- 
pression of  this  midsummer  spirit.  Romeo 
and  Juliet  were  very  much  in  love;  although 
they  tell  me  some  German  critics  are  of  a 
different  opinion,  probably  the  same  who 
would  have  us  think  Mercutio  a  dull  fellow. 
Poor  Antony  was  in  love,  and  no  mistake. 
That  lay  figure  Marius,  in  Les  Miserables^ 

47 


"  VIRGINIBUS  P  UERISQUE  " 

is  also  a  genuine  case  in  his  own  way,  and 
worth  observation.  A  good  many  of  George 
Sand's  people  are  thoroughly  in  love;  and 
so  are  a  good  many  of  George  Meredith's. 
Altogether,  there  is  plenty  to  read  on  the 
subjed.  If  the  root  of  the  matter  be  in  him, 
and  if  he  has  the  requisite  chords  to  set  in 
vibration,  a  young  man  may  occasionally 
enter,  with  the  key  of  art,  into  that  land  of 
Beulah  which  is  upon  the  borders  of  Heaven 
and  within  sight  of  the  City  of  Love.  There 
let  him  sit  awhile  to  hatch  delightful  hopes 
and  perilous  illusions. 

One  thing  that  accompanies  the  passion 
in  its  first  blush  is  certainly  difficult  to  ex- 
plain. It  comes  (I  do  not  quite  see  how) 
that  from  having  a  very  supreme  sense  of 
pleasure  in  all  parts  of  life — in  lying  down 
to  sleep,  in  waking,  in  motion,  in  breath- 
ing, in  continuing  to  be  —  the  lover  begins 
to  r^.gard  his  happiness  as  beneficial  for  the 
rest  of  the  world  and  highly  meritorious  in 
himself.  Our  race  has  never  been  able  con- 
tentedly to  suppose  that  the  noise  of  its 
wars,  conduced  by  a  few  young  gentle- 
men in  a  corner  of  an  inconsiderable  star, 
48 


"  VIRGINIB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

does  not  re-echo  among  the  courts  of 
Heaven  with  quite  a  formidable  effed.  In 
much  the  same  taste,  when  people  find  a 
great  to-do  in  their  own  breasts,  they  imag- 
ine it  must  have  some  influence  in  their 
neighbourhood.  The  presence  of  the  two 
lovers  is  so  enchanting  to  each  other  that  it 
seems  as  if  it  must  be  the  best  thing  possi- 
ble for  everybody  else.  They  are  half  in- 
clined to  fancy  it  is  because  of  them  and 
their  love  that  the  sky  is  blue  and  the  sun 
shines.  And  certainly  the  weather  is  usually 
fine  while  people  are  courting.  .  .  «  In  point 
of  fad,  although  the  happy  man  feels  very 
kindly  towards  others  of  his  own  sex,  there 
is  apt  to  be  something  too  much  of  the  mag- 
nifico  in  his  demeanour.  If  people  grow 
presuming  and  self-important  over  such 
matters  as  a  dukedom  or  the  Holy  See,  they 
will  scarcely  support  the  dizziest  elevation 
in  life  without  some  suspicion  of  a  strut; 
and  the  dizziest  elevation  is  to  love 
and  be  loved  in  return.  Consequently,  ac- 
cepted lovers  are  a  trifle  condescending  in 
their  address  to  other  men.  An  overween- 
ing sense  of  the  passion  and  importance  of 

49 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

life  hardly  conduces  to  simplicity  of  man- 
ner. To  women,  they  feel  very  nobly,  very 
purely,  and  very  generously,  as  if  they  were 
so  many  Joan-of-Arcs ;  but  this  does  not 
come  out  in  their  behaviour;  and  they  treat 
them  to  Grandisonian  airs  marked  with  a 
suspicion  of  fatuity.  1  am  not  quite  certain 
that  women  do  not  like  this  sort  of  thing; 
but  really,  after  having  bemused  myself  over 
Daniel  Deronda,  I  have  given  up  trying  to 
understand  what  they  like. 

If  it  did  nothing  else,  this  sublime  and 
ridiculous  superstition,  that  the  pleasure  of 
the  pair  is  somehow  blessed  to  others,  and 
everybody  is  made  happier  in  their  happi- 
ness, would  serve  at  least  to  keep  love  gen- 
erous and  great-hearted.  Nor  is  it  quite  a 
baseless  superstition  after  all.  Other  lovers 
are  hugely  interested.  They  strike  the  nicest 
balance  between  pity  and  approval,  when 
they  see  people  aping  the  greatness  of  their 
own  sentiments.  It  is  an  understood  thing 
in  the  play,  that  while  the  young  gentlefolk 
are  courting  on  the  terrace,  a  rough  flirta- 
tion is  being  carried  on,  and  a  light,  trivial 
sort  of  love  is  growing  up,  between  the 
50 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

footman  and  the  singing  chambermaid.  As 
people  are  generally  cast  for  the  leading 
parts  in  their  own  imaginations,  the  reader 
can  apply  the  parallel  to  real  life  without 
much  chance  of  going  wrong.  In  short,  they 
are  quite  sure  this  other  love-affair  is  no^ 
so  deep-seated  as  their  own,  but  they  like 
dearly  to  see  it  going  forward.  And  love, 
considered  as  a  spe(flacle,  must  have  attrac- 
tions for  many  who  are  not  of  the  con- 
fraternity. The  sentimental  old  maid  is  a 
commonplace  of  the  novelists;  and  he  must 
be  rather  a  poor  sort  of  human  being,  to  be 
sure,  who  can  look  on  at  this  pretty  mad- 
ness without  indulgence  and  sympathy. 
For  nature  commends  itself  to  people  with 
a  most  insinuating  art;  the  busiest  is  now 
and  again  arrested  by  a  great  sunset;  and 
you  may  be  as  pacific  or  as  cold-blooded 
as  you  will,  but  you  cannot  help  some  emo- 
tion when  you  read  of  well-disputed  battles, 
or  meet  a  pair  of  lovers  in  the  lane. 

Certainly,  whatever  it  may  be  with  re- 
gard to  the  world  at  large,  this  idea  of  ben- 
eficent pleasure  is  true  as  between  the 
sweethearts.  To  do  good  and  communicate 

SI 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

is  the  lover's  grand  intention.  It  is  the  hap- 
piness of  the  other  that  makes  his  own  most 
intense  gratification.  It  is  not  possible  to 
disentangle  the  different  emotions,  the  pride, 
humility,  pity  and  passion,  which  are  ex- 
cited by  a  look  of  happy  love  or  an  unex- 
pe6led  caress.  To  make  one's  self  beautiful, 
to  dress  the  hair,  to  excel  in  talk,  to  do  any- 
thing and  all  things  that  puff  out  the  char- 
ader  and  attributes  and  make  them  impos- 
ing in  the  eyes  of  others,  is  not  only  to 
magnify  one's  self,  but  to  offer  the  most 
delicate  homage  at  the  same  time.  And  it  is 
in  this  latter  intention  that  they  are  done  by 
lovers;  for  the  essence  of  love  is  kindness; 
and  indeed  it  may  be  best  defined  as  pas- 
sionate kindness:  kindness,  so  to  speak,  run 
mad  and  become  importunate  and  violent. 
Vanity  in  a  merely  personal  sense  exists  no 
longer.  The  lover  takes  a  perilous  pleasure 
in  privately  displaying  his  weak  points  and 
having  them,  one  after  another,  accepted 
and  condoned.  He  wishes  to  be  assured 
that  he  is  not  loved  for  this  or  that  good 
quality,  but  for  himself,  or  something  as 
like  himself  as  he  can  contrive  to  set  for- 
52 


"  VIRGINIB  US  P  UERISQ  UE " 

ward.  For,  although  it  may  have  been  a  very 
difficult  thing  to  paint  the  Marriage  of  Cana, 
or  write  the  fourth  ad  of  Antony  and  Cleo- 
patra, there  is  a  more  difficult  piece  of  art  be- 
fore every  one  in  this  world  who  cares  to  set 
aboutexplaininghisowncharader  to  others. 
Words  and  ads  are  easily  wrenched  from 
their  true  significance;  and  they  are  all  the 
language  we  have  to  come  and  go  upon.  A 
pitiful  job  we  make  of  it,  as  a  rule.  For  bet- 
ter or  worse,  people  mistake  our  meaning 
and  take  our  emotions  at  a  wrong  valua- 
tion. And  generally  we  rest  pretty  content 
with  our  failures;  we  are  content  to  be  mis- 
apprehended by  cackling  flirts;  but  when 
once  a  man  is  moonstruck  with  this  affec- 
tion of  love,  he  makes  it  a  point  of  honour 
to  clear  such  dubieties  away.  He  cannot  have 
the  Best  of  her  Sex  misled  upon  a  point  of 
this  importance;  and  his  pride  revolts  at  be- 
ing loved  in  a  mistake. 

He  discovers  a  great  reludance  to  return 
on  former  periods  of  his  life.  To  all  that  has 
not  been  shared  with  her,  rights  and  duties, 
bygone  fortunes  and  dispositions,  he  can 
look  back  only  by  a  difficult  and  repugnant 

5^ 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

effort  of  the  will.  That  he  should  have 
wasted  some  years  in  ignorance  of  what 
alone  was  really  important,  that  he  may  have 
entertained  the  thought  of  other  women 
with  any  show  of  complacency,  is  a  burthen 
almost  too  heavy  for  his  self-respe(5l.  But  it 
is  the  thought  of  another  past  that  rankles 
in  his  spirit  like  a  poisoned  wound.  That  he 
himself  made  a  fashion  of  being  alive  in  the 
bald,  beggarly  days  before  a  certain  meet- 
ing, is  deplorable  enough  in  all  good  con- 
science. But  that  She  should  have  permitted 
herself  the  same  liberty  seems  inconsistent 
with  a  Divine  Providence. 

A  great  many  people  run  down  jealousy 
on  the  score  that  it  is  an  artificial  feeling,  as 
well  as  practically  inconvenient.  This  is 
scarcely  fair;  for  the  feeling  on  which  it 
merely  attends,  hke  an  ill-humoured  cour- 
tier, is  itself  artificial  in  exadly  the  same 
sense  and  to  the  same  degree.  I  suppose 
what  is  meant  by  that  objedion  is  that  jeal- 
ousy has  not  always  been  a  chara(5ler  of 
man;  formed  no  part  of  that  very  modest 
kit  of  sentiments  with  which  he  is  supposed 
to  have  begun  the  world;  but  waited  to 

54 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE'' 

make  its  appearance  in  better  days  and 
among  richer  natures.  And  this  is  equally 
true  of  love,  and  friendship,  and  love  of 
country,  and  delight  in  what  they  call  the 
beauties  of  nature,  and  most  other  things 
worth  having.  Love,  in  particular,  will  not 
endure  any  historical  scrutiny:  to  all  who 
have  fallen  across  it,  it  is  one  of  the  most 
incontestible  fads  in  the  world;  but  if  you 
begin  to  ask  what  it  was  in  other  periods 
and  countries,  in  Greece  for  instance,  the 
strangest  doubts  begin  to  spring  up,  and 
everything  seems  so  vague  and  changing 
that  a  dream  is  logical  in  comparison.  Jeal- 
ousy, at  any  rate,  is  one  of  the  consequences 
of  love;  you  may  like  it  or  not,  at  pleasure; 
but  there  it  is. 

It  is  not  exadly  jealousy,  however,  that 
we  feel  when  we  refled  on  the  past  of  those 
we  love.  A  bundle  of  letters  found  after  years 
of  happy  union  creates  no  sense  of  insecur- 
ity in  the  present;  and  yet  it  will  pain  a 
man  sharply.  The  two  people  entertain  no 
vulgar  doubt  of  each  other:  but  this  pre-ex- 
istence  of  both  occurs  to  the  mind  as  some- 
thing indelicate.  To  be  altogether  right,  they 

55 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

should  have  had  twin  birth  together,  at  the 
same  moment  with  the  feeling  that  unites 
them.  Then  indeed  it  would  be  simple  and 
perfed  and  without  reserve  or  afterthought. 
Then  they  would  understand  each  other 
with  a  fulness  impossible  otherwise.  There 
would  be  no  barrier  between  them  of  asso- 
ciations that  cannot  be  imparted.  They 
would  be  led  into  none  of  those  compari- 
sons that  send  the  blood  back  to  the  heart. 
And  they  would  know  that  there  had  been 
no  time  lost,  and  they  had  been  together  as 
much  as  was  possible.  For  besides  terror  for 
the  separation  that  must  follow  some  time 
or  other  in  the  future,  men  feel  anger  and 
something  like  remorse,  when  they  think 
of  that  other  separation  which  endured  un- 
til they  met.  Some  one  has  written  that  love 
makes  people  believe  in  im.mortality,  be- 
cause there  seems  not  to  be  room  enough 
in  hfe  for  so  great  a  tenderness,  and  it  is  in- 
conceivable that  the  most  masterful  of  our 
emotions  should  have  no  more  than  the 
spare  moments  of  a  few  years.  Indeed,  it 
seems  strange;  but  if  we  call  to  mind  anal- 
ogies, we  can  hardly  regard  it  as  impossible. 
56 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

"The  blind  bow-boy,"  who  smiles  upon 
us  from  the  end  of  terraces  in  old  Dutch  gar- 
dens, laughingly  hails  his  bird-bolts  among 
a  fleeting  generation.  But  for  as  fast  as  ever 
he  shoots,  the  game  dissolves  and  disap- 
pears into  eternity  from  under  his  falling 
arrows;  this  one  is  gone  ere  he  is  struck; 
the  other  has  but  time  to  make  one  gesture 
and  give  one  passionate  cry;  and  they  are 
all  the  things  of  a  moment.  When  the  gen- 
eration is  gone,  when  the  play  is  over,  when 
the  thirty  years'  panorama  has  been  with- 
drawn in  tatters  from  the  stage  of  the  world, 
we  may  ask  what  has  become  of  these  great, 
weighty,  and  undying  loves,  and  the  sweet- 
hearts who  despised  mortal  conditions  in  a 
fine  credulity;  and  they  can  only  show  us  a 
few  songs  in  a  bygone  taste,  a  few  actions 
worth  remembering,  and  a  few  children  who 
have  retained  some  happy  stamp  from  the 
disposition  of  their  parents. 


57 


VIRGINIBUS  PUERISQUE" 

IV 

TRUTH  OF  INTERCOURSE 

MONG  sayings  that  have  a  currency 
in  spite  of  being  wholly  false  upon 
the  face  of  them  for  the  sake  of  a 
half-truth  upon  another  subje(fl  which  is  acci- 
dentally combined  with  the  error,  one  of  the 
grossest  and  broadest  conveys  the  mon- 
strous proposition  that  it  is  easy  to  teli  the 
truth  and  hard  to  tell  a  lie.  I  wish  heartily  it 
were.  But  the  truth  is  one;  it  has  first  to  be 
discovered,  then  justly  and  exadly  uttered. 
Even  with  instruments  specially  contrived 
for  such  a  purpose  —  with  a  foot  rule,  a 
level,  or  a  theodolite — it  is  not  easy  to  be 
exa6t;  it  is  easier,  alas  !  to  be  inexafl.  From 
those  who  mark  the  divisions  on  a  scale  to 
those  who  measure  the  boundaries  of  em- 
pires or  the  distance  of  the  heavenly  stars,  it 
is  by  careful  method  and  minute,  unweary- 
ing attention  that  men  rise  even  to  mate- 
58 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

rial  exactness  or  to  sure  knowledge  even  of 
external  and  constant  things.  But  it  is  easier 
to  draw  the  outline  of  a  mountain  than  the 
changing  appearance  of  a  face;  and  truth  in 
human  relations  is  of  this  more  intangible 
and  dubious  order:  hard  to  seize,  harder  to 
communicate.  Veracity  to  fa(fts  in  a  loose, 
colloquial  sense — not  to  say  that  1  have 
been  in  Malabar  when  as  a  matter  of  fad  I 
was  never  out  of  England,  not  to  say  that  I 
have  read  Cervantes  in  the  original,  when  as 
a  matter  of  fad  I  know  not  one  syllable  of 
Spanish  —  this,  indeed,  is  easy  and  to  the 
same  degree  unimportant  in  itself.  Lies  of 
this  sort,  according  to  circumstances,  may 
or  may  not  be  important;  in  a  certain  sense 
even  they  may  or  may  not  be  false.  The 
habitual  liar  may  be  a  very  honest  fellow, 
and  live  truly  with  his  wife  and  friends; 
while  another  man  who  never  told  a  formal 
falsehood  in  his  life  may  yet  be  himself  one 
lie  —  heart  and  face,  from  top  to  bottom.  This 
is  the  kind  of  lie  which  poisons  intimacy. 
And,  vice  versa,  veracity  to  sentiment,  truth 
in  a  relation,  truth  to  your  own  heart  and 
your  friends,  never  to  feign  or  falsify  emo- 

59 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

tion  —  that  is  the  truth  which  makes  love 
possible  and  mankind  happy. 

Vart  de  hien  dire  is  but  a  drawing-room 
accomplishment  unless  it  be  pressed  into 
the  service  of  the  truth.  The  difficulty  of  lit- 
erature is  not  to  write,  but  to  write  what 
you  mean;  not  to  affe(5t  your  reader,  but  to 
affe6t  him  precisely  as  you  wish.  This  is 
commonly  understood  in  the  case  of  books 
or  set  orations ;  even  in  making  your  will,  or 
writing  an  explicit  letter,  some  difficulty  is 
admitted  by  the  world.  But  one  thing  you 
can  never  make  Philistine  natures  under- 
stand; one  thing,  which  yet  lies  on  the  sur- 
face, remains  as  unseizable  to  their  wits  as 
a  high  flight  of  metaphysics  —  namely,  that 
the  business  of  life  is  mainly  carried  on  by 
means  of  this  difficult  art  of  literature,  and 
according  to  a  man's  proficiency  in  that  art 
shall  be  the  freedom  and  the  fulness  of  his 
intercourse  with  other  men.  Anybody,  it  is 
supposed,  can  say  what  he  means;  and,  in 
spite  of  their  notorious  experience  to  the 
contrary,  people  so  continue  to  suppose. 
Now,  I  simply  open  the  last  book  I  have 
been  reading — Mr.  Leland's  captivating  Eng- 
60 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

lish  Gipsies.  **  It  is  said,"  I  find  on  p.  7,  "that 
those  who  can  converse  with  Irish  peasants 
in  their  own  native  tongue  form  far  higher 
opinions  of  their  appreciation  of  the  beau- 
tiful, and  of  the  elements  of  humour  and  pa- 
thos in  their  hearts,  than  do  those  who 
know  their  thoughts  only  through  the  me- 
dium of  English.  I  know  from  my  own  ob- 
servations that  this  is  quite  the  case  with 
the  Indians  of  North  America,  and  it  is  un- 
questionably so  with  the  gipsy."  In  short, 
where  a  man  has  not  a  full  possession  of  the 
language,  the  most  important,  because  the 
most  amiable,  qualities  of  his  nature  have  to 
lie  buried  and  fallow;  for  the  pleasure  of 
comradeship,  and  the  intelledual  part  of 
love,  rest  upon  these  very  ''elements  of  hu- 
mour and  pathos."  Here  is  a  man  opulent 
in  both,  and  for  lack  of  a  medium  he  can  put 
none  of  it  out  to  interest  in  the  market  of 
affedion!  But  what  is  thus  made  plain  to 
our  apprehensions  in  the  case  of  a  foreign 
language  is  partially  true  even  with  the 
tongue  we  learned  in  childhood.  Indeed,  we 
all  speak  different  dialeds;  one  shall  be  co- 
pious and  exa6t,  another  loose  and  meagre; 

61 


"  VI R  GIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

but  the  speech  of  the  ideal  talker  shall  cor- 
respond and  fit  upon  the  truth  of  faft — not 
clumsily,  obscuring  lineaments,  like  a  man- 
tle, but  cleanly  adhering,  like  an  athlete's 
skin.  And  what  is  the  result?  That  the  one 
can  open  himself  more  clearly  to  his  friends, 
and  can  enjoy  more  of  what  makes  life  truly 
valuable — intimacy  with  those  he  loves. 
An  orator  makes  a  false  step;  he  employs 
some  trivial,  some  absurd,  some  vulgar 
phrase;  in  the  turn  of  a  sentence  he  insults, 
by  a  side  wind,  those  whom  he  is  labour- 
ing to  charm ;  in  speaking  to  one  sentiment 
he  unconsciously  ruffles  another  in  paren- 
thesis; and  you  are  not  surprised,  for  you 
know  his  task  to  be  delicate  and  filled  with 
perils.  "O  frivolous  mind  of  man,  light  ig- 
norance !"  As  if  yourself,  when  you  seek  to 
explain  some  misunderstanding  or  excuse 
some  apparent  fault,  speaking  swiftly  and 
addressing  a  mind  still  recently  incensed, 
were  not  harnessing  for  a  more  perilous  ad- 
venture; as  if  yourself  required  less  tad: 
and  eloquence;  as  if  an  angry  friend  or  a 
suspicious  lover  were  not  more  easy  to  offend 
than  a  meeting  of  indifferent  politicians! 
6a 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

Nay,  and  the  orator  treads  in  a  beaten 
round;  the  matters  he  discusses  have  been 
discussed  a  thousand  times  before ;  language 
is  ready-shaped  to  his  purpose;  he  speaks 
out  of  a  cut  and  dry  vocabulary.  But  you  — 
may  it  not  be  that  your  defence  reposes  on 
some  subtlety  of  feeling,  not  so  much  as 
touched  upon  in  Shakespeare,  to  express 
which,  like  a  pioneer,  you  must  venture 
forth  into  zones  of  thought  still  unsurveyed, 
and  become  yourself  a  literary  innovator? 
For  even  in  love  there  are  unlovely  humours ; 
ambiguous  a6ls,  unpardonable  words,  may 
yet  have  sprung  from  a  kind  sentiment. 
If  the  injured  one  could  read  your  heart, 
you  may  be  sure  that  he  would  understand 
and  pardon;  but,  alas  !  the  heart  cannot  be 
shown  —  it  has  to  be  demonstrated  in 
words.  Do  you  think  it  is  a  hard  thing  to 
write  poetry  ?  Why,  that  is  to  write  poetry, 
and  of  a  high,  if  not  the  highest,  order. 

I  should  even  more  admire  ''the  lifelong 
and  heroic  literary  labours"  of  my  fellow- 
men,  patiently  clearing  up  in  words  their 
loves  and  their  contentions,  and  speaking 
their  autobiography  daily  to  their  wives, 

63 


"  VIRGINIB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

were  it  not  for  a  circumstance  which  less- 
ens their  difficulty  and  my  admiration  by 
equal  parts.  For  life,  though  largely,  is  not 
entirely  carried  on  by  literature.  We  are  sub- 
je<?t  to  physical  passions  and  contortions; 
the  voice  breaks  and  changes,  and  speaks 
by  unconscious  and  winning  inflexions ;  we 
have  legible  countenances,  like  an  open 
book;  things  that  cannot  be  said  look  elo- 
quently through  the  eyes;  and  the  soul,  not 
locked  into  the  body  as  a  dungeon,  dwells 
ever  on  the  threshold  with  appealing  sig- 
nals. Groans  and  tears,  looks  and  gestures, 
a  flush  or  a  paleness,  are  often  the  most 
clear  reporters  of  the  heart,  and  speak  more 
diredly  to  the  hearts  of  others.  The  message 
flies  by  these  interpreters  in  the  least  space 
of  time,  and  the  misunderstanding  is  avert- 
ed in  the  moment  of  its  birth.  To  explain  in 
words  takes  time  and  a  just  and  patient 
hearing;  and  in  the  critical  epochs  of  a  close 
relation,  patience  and  justice  are  not  quali- 
ties on  which  we  can  rely.  But  the  look  or 
the  gesture  explains  things  in  a  breath ;  they 
tell  their  message  without  ambiguity;  un- 
like speech,  they  cannot  stumble  by  the 
64 


«  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

way,  on  a  reproach  or  an  allusion  that  should 
steel  your  friend  against  the  truth;  and  then 
they  have  a  higher  authority,  for  they  are 
the  dired  expression  of  the  heart,  not  yet 
transmitted  through  the  unfaithful  and  so- 
phisticating brain.  Not  long  ago  I  wrote  a 
letter  to  a  friend  which  came  near  involv- 
ing us  in  a  quarrel;  but  we  met,  and  in  per- 
sonal talk  I  repeated  the  worst  of  what  I  had 
written,  and  added  worse  to  that;  and  with 
the  commentary  of  the  body  it  seemed  not 
unfriendly  either  to  hear  or  say.  Indeed,  let- 
ters are  in  vain  for  the  purposes  of  intimacy ; 
an  absence  is  a  dead  break  in  the  relation; 
yet  two  who  know  each  other  fully  and  are 
bent  on  perpetuity  in  love,  may  so  preserve 
the  attitude  of  their  affe6lions  that  they  may 
meet  on  the  same  terms  as  they  had  parted. 
Pitiful  is  the  case  of  the  bhnd,  who  can- 
not read  the  face;  pitiful  that  of  the  deaf, 
who  cannot  follow  the  changes  of  the  voice. 
And  there  are  others  also  to  be  pitied;  for 
there  are  some  of  an  inert,  uneloquent  na- 
ture, who  have  been  denied  all  the  symbols 
of  communication,  who  have  neither  a  live- 
ly play  of  facial  expression,  nor  speaking 

65 


«  VIRGIN/BUS  PUE RISQUE  " 

gestures,  nor  a  responsive  voice,  nor  yet  the 
gift  of  frank,  explanatory  speech:  people 
truly  made  of  clay,  people  tied  for  life  into 
a  bag  which  no  one  can  undo.  They  are 
poorer  than  the  gipsy,  for  their  heart  can 
speak  no  language  under  heaven.  Such  peo- 
ple we  must  learn  slowly  by  the  tenor  of 
their  adls,  or  through  yea  and  nay  commu- 
nications; or  we  take  them  on  trust  on  the 
strength  of  a  general  air,  and  now  and  again, 
when  we  see  the  spirit  breaking  through  in 
a  flash,  correal  or  change  our  estimate.  But 
these  will  be  uphill  intimacies,  without 
charm  or  freedom,  to  the  end;  and  freedom 
is  the  chief  ingredient  in  confidence.  Some 
minds,  romantically  dull,  despise  physical 
endowments.  That  is  a  do(ftrine  for  a  mis- 
anthrope; to  those  who  like  their  fellow- 
creatures  it  must  always  be  meaningless; 
and,  for  my  part,  I  can  see  few  things  more 
desirable,  after  the  possession  of  such  radi- 
cal qualities  as  honour  and  humour  and  pa- 
thos, than  to  have  a  lively  and  not  a  stolid 
countenance;  to  have  looks  to  correspond 
with  every  feeling ;  to  be  elegant  and  de- 
lightful in  person,  so  that  we  shall  please 
66 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

even  in  the  intervals  of  a6live  pleasing,  and 
may  never  discredit  speech  with  uncouth 
manners  or  become  unconsciously  our  own 
burlesques.  But  of  all  unfortunates  there  is 
one  creature  (for  I  will  not  call  him  man) 
conspicuous  in  misfortune.  This  is  he  whc 
has  forfeited  his  birthright  of  expression, 
who  has  cultivated  artful  intonations,  whcw 
has  taught  his  face  tricks,  like  a  pet  mon- 
key, and  on  every  side  perverted  or  cut  ofi 
his  means  of  communication  with  his  fel- 
low-men. The  body  is  a  house  of  many 
windows:  there  we  all  sit,  showing  our- 
selves and  crying  on  the  passers-by  to  come 
and  love  us.  But  this  fellow  has  filled  his 
windows  with  opaque  glass,  elegantly  col- 
oured. His  house  may  be  admired  for  its 
design,  the  crowd  may  pause  before  the 
stained  windows,  but  meanwhile  the  poor 
proprietor  must  lie  languishing  within,  un- 
comforted,  unchangeably  alone. 

Truth  of  intercourse  is  something  more 
difficult  than  to  refrain  from  open  lies.  It  is 
possible  to  avoid  falsehood  and  yet  not  tell 
the  truth.  It  is  not  enough  to  answer  formal 
questions.  To  reach  the  truth  by  yea  and 

67 


! 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

nay  communications  implies  a  questioner 
with  a  share  of  inspiration,  such  as  is  often 
found  in  mutual  love.  Yea  and  nay  mean 
nothing;  the  meaning  must  have  been  re- 
lated in  the  question.  Many  words  are  often 
necessary  to  convey  a  very  simple  state- 
ment; for  in  this  sort  of  exercise  we  never 
hit  the  gold;  the  most  that  we  can  hope  is 
by  many  arrows,  more  or  less  far  off  on  dif- 
ferent sides,  to  indicate,  in  the  course  of 
time, for  what  target  we  are  aiming,  and  after 
an  hour's  talk,  back  and  forward,  to  convey 
the  purport  of  a  single  principle  or  a  single 
thought.  And  yet  while  the  curt,  pithy 
speaker  misses  the  point  entirely,  a  wordy, 
prolegomenous  babbler  will  often  add  three 
new  offences  in  the  process  of  excusing 
one.  It  is  really  a  most  delicate  affair.  The 
world  was  made  before  the  English  lan- 
guage, and  seemingly  upon  a  different  de- 
sign. Suppose  we  held  our  converse  not  in 
words  but  in  miusic;  those  who  have  a  bad 
ear  would  find  themselves  cut  off  from  all 
near  commerce,  and  no  better  than  foreign- 
ers in  this  big  world.  But  we  do  not  con- 
sider how  many  have  ''a  bad  ear"  for 
68 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

words,  nor  how  often  the  most  eloquent 
find  nothing  to  reply.  I  hate  questioners  and 
questions;  there  are  so  few  that  can  be 
spoken  to  without  a  lie.  ''  Do  you  forgive 
me}'*  Madam  and  sweetheart,  so  far  as  I 
have  gone  in  life  I  have  never  yet  been  able 
to  discover  what  forgiveness  means.  "  Is  it 
still  the  same  between  us?"  Why,  how  can 
it  be  ?  It  is  eternally  different;  and  yet  you 
are  still  the  friend  of  my  heart.  ''  Do  you 
understand  me?"  God  knows;  I  should 
think  it  highly  improbable. 

The  cruellest  lies  are  often  told  in  silence. 
A  man  may  have  sat  in  a  room  for  hours  and 
not  opened  his  teeth,  and  yet  come  out  of 
that  room  a  disloyal  friend  or  a  vile  calum- 
niator. And  how  many  loves  have  perished 
because,  from  pride,  or  spite,  or  diffidence, 
or  that  unmanly  shame  which  withholds  a 
man  from  daring  to  betray  emotion,  a  lover, 
at  the  critical  point  of  the  relation,  has  but 
hung  his  head  and  held  his  tongue .?  And, 
again,  a  lie  may  be  told  by  a  truth,  or  a  truth 
conveyed  through  a  lie.  Truth  to  fads  is  not 
always  truth  to  sentiment;  and  part  of  the 
truth,  as  often  happens  in  answer  to  a  ques- 

69 


«  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

tion,  may  be  the  foulest  calumny.  A  fad  may 
be  an  exception;  but  the  feeling  is  the  law, 
and  it  is  that  which  you  must  neither  gar- 
ble nor  belie.  The  whole  tenor  of  a  conver- 
sation is  a  part  of  the  meaning  of  each  sep- 
arate statement;  the  beginning  and  the  end 
define  and  travesty  the  intermediate  conver- 
sation. You  never  speak  to  God;  you  ad- 
dress a  fellow-man,  full  of  his  own  tempers; 
and  to  tell  truth,  rightly  understood,  is  not 
to  state  the  true  fiids,  but  to  convey  a  true 
impression;  truth  in  spirit,  not  truth  to  let- 
ter, is  the  true  veracity.  To  reconcile  averted 
friends  a  Jesuitical  discretion  is  often  need- 
ful, not  so  much  to  gain  a  kind  hearing  as 
to  communicate  sober  truth.  Women  have 
an  ill  name  in  this  connexion;  yet  they  live 
in  as  true  relations ;  the  lie  of  a  good  woman 
is  the  true  index  of  her  heart. 

*'It  takes,"  says  Thoreau,  in  the  noblest 
and  most  useful  passage  1  remember  to  have 
read  in  any  modern  author,  ^  ''two  to  speak 
truth  —  one  to  speak  and  another  to  hear." 
He  must  be  very  little  experienced,  or  have 

'^  A  Week  on  the  Concord  and  Merrimack  Rivers^ 
Wednesday,  p.  283. 
70 


"  VI R  GIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

no  great  zeal  for  truth,  who  does  not  recog- 
nise the  fa<5l.  A  grain  of  anger  or  a  grain  of 
suspicion  produces  strange  acoustical  ef- 
fects, and  makes  the  ear  greedy  to  remark 
offence.  Hence  we  find  those  who  have  once 
quarrelled  carry  themselves  distantly,  and 
are  ever  ready  to  break  the  truce.  To  speak 
truth  there  must  be  moral  equality  or  else  no 
resped ;  and  hence  between  parent  and  child 
intercourse  is  apt  to  degenerate  into  a  ver- 
bal fencing  bout,  and  misapprehensions  to 
become  ingrained.  And  there  is  another  side 
to  this,  for  the  parent  begins  with  an  im- 
perfe(fl  notion  of  the  child's  charader, 
formed  in  early  years  or  during  the  equi- 
no<5tial  gales  of  youth ;  to  this  he  adheres, 
noting  only  the  fads  which  suit  with  his 
preconception;  and  wherever  a  person  fan- 
cies himself  unjustly  judged,  he  at  once  and 
finally  gives  up  the  effort  to  speak  truth. 
With  our  chosen  friends,  on  the  other  hand, 
and  still  more  between  lovers  ( for  mutual 
understanding  is  love's  essence),  the  truth 
is  easily  indicated  by  the  one  and  aptly 
comprehended  by  the  other.  A  hint  taken, 
a  look  understood,  conveys  the  gist  of  long 

71 


"  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

and  delicate  explanations;  and  where  the 
life  is  known  tv^wyea  and  nay  become  lu- 
minous. In  the  closest  of  all  relations  —  that 
of  a  love  well  founded  and  equally  shared 
—  speech  is  half  discarded,  like  a  rounda- 
bout infantile  process  or  a  ceremony  of  for- 
mal etiquette;  and  the  two  communicate 
diredly  by  their  presences,  and  with  few 
looks  and  fewer  words  contrive  to  share 
their  good  and  evil  and  uphold  each  other's 
hearts  in  joy.  For  love  rests  upon  a  physical 
basis;  it  is  a  familiarity  of  nature's  making 
and  apart  from  voluntary  choice.  Under- 
standing has  in  some  sort  outrun  knowl- 
edge, for  the  affedion  perhaps  began  with 
the  acquaintance;  and  as  it  was  not  made 
like  other  relations,  so  it  is  not,  like  them,  to 
be  perturbed  or  clouded.  Each  knows  more 
than  can  be  uttered;  each  lives  by  faith,  and 
believes  by  a  natural  compulsion;  and  be- 
tween man  and  wife  the  language  of  the  body 
is  largely  developed  and  grown  strangely  el- 
oquent. The  thought  that  prompted  and  was 
conveyed  in  a  caress  would  only  lose  to  be 
set  down  in  words  —  ay,  although  Shake- 
speare himself  should  be  the  scribe. 
72 


«  VIRGIN  IB  US  P  UERISQ  UE  " 

Yet  it  is  in  these  dear  intimacies,  beyond 
all  others,  that  we  must  strive  and  do  bat- 
tle for  the  truth.  Let  but  a  doubt  arise,  and 
alas!  all  the  previous  intimacy  and  confi- 
dence is  but  another  charge  against  the  per- 
son doubted.  "  What  a  monstrous  dishon- 
esty is  this  if  I  have  been  deceived  so  long 
and  so  completely  !"  Let  but  that  thought 
gain  entrance,  and  you  plead  before  a  deaf 
tribunal.  Appeal  to  the  past;  why,  that  is 
your  crime!  Make  all  clear,  convince  the 
reason;  alas!  speciousness  is  but  a  proof 
against  you.  '■''  If  you  can  abuse  me  now,  the 
more  likely  that  you  have  abused  me  from 
the  first. ' ' 

For  a  strong  afifedion  such  moments  are 
worth  supporting,  and  they  will  end  well; 
for  your  advocate  is  in  your  lover's  heart 
and  speaks  her  own  language;  it  is  not  you 
but  she  herself  who  can  defend  and  clear 
you  of  the  charge.  But  in  slighter  intima- 
cies, and  for  a  less  stringent  union  .?  Indeed, 
is  it  worth  while  ?  We  are  all  incompris,  only 
more  or  less  concerned  for  the  mischance; 
all  trying  wrongly  to  do  right;  all  fawning 
at  each  other's  feet  like  dumb,  negle(5ted 

73 


"  VIRGINIB  US  PUERTSQ  UE  " 

lap-dogs.  Sometimes  we  catch  an  eye  — 
this  is  our  opportunity  in  the  ages  —  and 
we  wag  our  tail  with  a  poor  smile.  "  Is  that 
all  ?  "  All  ?  If  you  only  knew  !  But  how  can 
they  know  ?  They  do  not  love  us ;  the  more 
fools  we  to  squander  life  on  the  indifferent. 
But  the  morality  of  the  thing,  you  will  be 
glad  to  hear,  is  excellent;  for  it  is  only  by 
trying  to  understand  others  that  we  can  get 
our  own  hearts  understood;  and  in  matters 
of  human  feeling  the  clement  judge  is  the 
most  successful  pleader. 


CRABBED  AGE  AND  YOUTH 

"  You  know  my  mother  now  and  then  argues  very 
notably;  always  very  warmly  at  least.  I  happen  often  to 
differ  from  her;  and  we  both  think  so  well  of  our  own 
arguments,  that  we  very  seldom  are  so  happy  as  to  con- 
vince one  another,  A  pretty  common  case,  I  believe,  in  all 
vehement  debatings.  She  says,  I  am  too  witty  ;  Anglice, 
too  pert ;  I,  that  she  is  too  wise  ;  that  is  to  say,  being  like- 
wise put  into  English,  not  so  young  as  she  has  been.^^ — 
Miss  Howe  to  Miss  Harlowe,  Clarissa,  vol.  ii..  Letter  xiii. 

'HERE  is  a  strong  feeling  in  favour 
of  cowardly  and  prudential  pro- 
verbs. The  sentiments  of  a  man 
while  he  is  full  of  ardour  and  hope  are  to  be 
received,  it  is  supposed,  with  some  qualifi- 
cation. But  when  the  same  person  has  igno- 
miniously  failed  and  begins  to  eat  up  his 
words,  he  should  be  listened  to  like  an  oracle. 
Most  of  our  pocket  wisdom  is  conceived  for 
the  use  of  mediocre  people,  to  discourage 
them  from  ambitious  attempts,  and  gener- 
ally console  them  in  their  mediocrity.  And 
since  mediocre  people  constitute  the  bulk  of 

75 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

humanity,  this  is  no  doubt  very  properly  so. 
But  it  does  not  follow  that  the  one  sort  of 
proposition  is  any  less  true  than  the  other, 
or  that  Icarus  is  not  to  be  more  praised,  and 
perhaps  more  envied,  than  Mr.  Samuel 
Budgett  the  Successful  Merchant.  The  one 
is  dead,  to  be  sure,  while  the  other  is  still 
in  his  counting-house  counting  out  his 
money;  and  doubtless  this  is  a  considera- 
tion. But  we  have,  on  the  other  hand,  some 
bold  and  magnanimous  sayings  common  to 
high  races  and  natures,  which  set  forth  the 
advantage  of  the  losing  side,  and  proclaim 
it  better  to  be  a  dead  lion  than  a  living  dog. 
It  is  difficult  to  fancy  how  the  mediocrities 
reconcile  such  sayings  with  their  proverbs. 
According  to  the  latter,  every  lad  who  goes 
to  sea  is  an  egregious  ass;  never  to  forget 
your  umbrella  through  a  long  life  would 
seem  a  higher  and  wiser  flight  of  achieve- 
ment than  to  go  smiling  to  the  stake;  and 
so  long  as  you  are  a  bit  of  a  coward  and  in- 
flexible in  money  matters,  you  fulfil  the 
whole  duty  of  man. 

It  is  a  still  more  difficult  consideration  for 
our  average  men,  that  while  all  their  teach- 
76 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

ers,  from  Solomon  down  to  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin and  the  ungodly  Binney,  have  incul- 
cated the  same  ideal  of  manners,  caution, 
and  respedability,  those  charaders  in  his- 
tory who  have  most  notoriously  flown  in 
the  face  of  such  precepts  are  spoken  of  in 
hyperbolical  terms  of  praise,  and  honoured 
with  public  monuments  in  the  streets  of 
our  commercial  centres.  This  is  very  be- 
wildering to  the  moral  sense.  You  have  Joan 
of  Arc,  who  left  a  humble  but  honest  and 
reputable  livelihood  under  the  eyes  of  her 
parents,  to  go  a-colonelling,  in  the  com- 
pany of  rowdy  soldiers,  against  the  enemies 
of  France;  surely  a  melancholy  example  for 
one's  daughters  !  And  then  you  have  Col- 
umbus, who  may  have  pioneered  America, 
but,  when  all  is  said,  was  a  most  imprudent 
navigator.  His  life  is  not  the  kind  of  thing 
one  would  like  to  put  into  the  hands  of 
young  people;  rather,  one  would  do  one's 
utmost  to  keep  it  from  their  knowledge,  as 
a  red  flag  of  adventure  and  disintegrating 
influence  in  life.  The  time  would  fail  me  if 
I  were  to  recite  all  the  big  names  in  history 
whose  exploits  are  perfectly  irrational  and 

77 


CRABBED  AGE  AND  YO UTH 

even  shocking  to  the  business  mind.  The 
incongruity  is  speaking;  and  I  imagine  it 
must  engender  among  the  mediocrities  a 
very  peculiar  attitude  towards  the  nobler 
and  showier  sides  of  national  life.  They  will 
read  of  the  Charge  of  Balaclava  in  much  the 
same  spirit  as  they  assist  at  a  performance 
of  the  Lyons  Mail.  Persons  of  substance  take 
in  the  Times  and  sit  composedly  in  pit  or 
boxes  according  to  the  degree  of  their  pros- 
perity in  business.  As  for  the  generals  who 
go  galloping  up  and  down  among  bomb- 
shells in  absurd  cocked  hats  —  as  for  the 
adors  who  raddle  their  faces  and  demean 
themselves  for  hire  upon  the  stage  —  they 
must  belong,  thank  God!  to  a  different  or- 
der of  beings,  whom  we  watch  as  we  watch 
the  clouds  careering  in  the  windy,  bottom- 
less inane,  or  read  about  like  charaders  in 
ancient  and  rather  fabulous  annals.  Our  off- 
spring would  no  more  think  of  copying 
their  behaviour,  let  us  hope,  than  of  doffmg 
their  clothes  and  painting  themselves  blue 
in  consequence  of  certain  admissions  in  the 
first  chapter  of  their  school  history  of  Eng- 
land. 

78 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YOUTH 

Discredited  as  they  are  in  pradice,  the 
cowardly  proverbs  hold  their  own  in  theory ; 
and  it  is  another  instance  of  the  same  spirit, 
that  the  opinions  of  old  men  about  life  have 
been  accepted  as  final.  All  sorts  of  allow- 
ances are  made  for  the  illusions  of  youth; 
and  none,  or  almost  none,  for  the  disen- 
chantments  of  age.  It  is  held  to  be  a  good 
taunt,  and  somehow  or  other  to  clinch  the 
question  logically,  when  an  old  gentle- 
men waggles  his  head  and  says:  ''Ah,  so 
I  thought  when  I  was  your  age."  It  is  not 
thought  an  answer  at  all,  if  the  young  man 
retorts:  "My  venerable  sir,  so  1  shall  most 
probably  think  when  I  am  yours."  And  yet 
the  one  is  as  good  as  the  other:  pass  for  pass, 
tit  for  tat,  a  Roland  for  an  Oliver. 

"Opinion  in  good  men,"  says  Milton, 
"is  but  knowledge  in  the  making."  All 
opinions,  properly  so  called,  are  stages  on 
the  road  to  truth.  It  does  not  follow  that  a 
man  will  travel  any  further;  but  if  he  has 
really  considered  the  world  and  drawn  a 
conclusion,  he  has  traveled  as  far.  This  does 
not  apply  to  formulae  got  by  rote,  which 
are   stages  on   the  road  to   nowhere   but 

79 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

second  childhood  and  the  grave.  To  have  a 
catchword  in  your  mouth  is  not  the  same 
thing  as  to  hold  an  opinion;  still  less  is  it 
the  same  thing  as  to  have  made  one  for 
yourself.  There  are  too  many  of  these  catch- 
words in  the  world  for  people  to  rap  out 
upon  you  like  an  oath  and  by  way  of  an 
argument.  They  have  a  currency  as  intellec- 
tual counters;  and  many  respectable  per- 
sons pay  their  way  with  nothing  else.  They 
seem  to  stand  for  vague  bodies  of  theory  in 
the  background.  The  imputed  virtue  of  folios 
full  of  knockdown  arguments  is  supposed 
to  reside  in  them,  just  as  some  of  the 
majesty  of  the  British  Empire  dwells  in  the 
constable's  truncheon.  They  are  used  in 
pure  superstition,  as  old  clodhoppers  spoil 
Latin  by  way  of  an  exorcism.  And  yet  they 
are  vastly  serviceable  for  checking  unprofit- 
able discussion  and  stopping  the  mouths  of 
babes  and  sucklings.  And  when  a  young 
man  comes  to  a  certain  stage  of  intelle(5lual 
growth,  the  examination  of  these  counters 
forms  a  gymnastic  at  once  amusing  and 
fortifying  to  the  mind. 

Because  1  have  reached  Paris,  I  am  not 
80 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

ashamed  of  having  passed  through  New- 
haven  and  Dieppe.  They  were  very  good 
places  to  pass  through,  and  I  am  none  the 
less  at  my  destination.  All  my  old  opinions 
were  only  stages  on  the  way  to  the  one  I 
now  hold,  as  itself  is  only  a  stage  on  the 
way  to  something  else.  I  am  no  more  abash- 
ed at  having  been  a  red-hot  Socialist  with 
a  panacea  of  my  own  than  at  having  been  a 
sucking  infant.  Doubtless  the  world  is  quite 
right  in  a  million  ways ;  but  you  have  to  be 
kicked  about  a  little  to  convince  you  of  the 
fad.  And  in  the  meanwhile  you  must  do 
something,   be  something,   beheve  some- 
thing. It  is  not  possible  to  keep  the  mind 
in  a  state  of  accurate  balance  and  blank; 
and  even  if  you  could  do  so,   instead  of 
coming  ultimately  to  the  right  conclusion, 
you  would  be  very  apt  to  remain  in  a  state 
of  balance  and  blank  to  perpetuity.  Even  in 
quite  intermediate  stages,  a  dash  of  enthu- 
siasm is  not  a  thing  to  be  ashamed  of  in  the 
retrospea:  if  St.  Paul  had  not  been  a  very 
zealous  Pharisee,   he  would  have  been  a 
colder  Christian.  For  my  part,  1  look  back 
to  the  time  when  I  was  a  Socialist  with 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

something  like  regret.  I  have  convinced 
myself  (for  the  moment)  that  we  had  better 
leave  these  great  changes  to  what  we  call 
great  blind  forces:  their  blindness  being  so 
much  more  perspicacious  than  the  little, 
peering,  partial  eyesight  of  men.  I  seem  to 
see  that  my  own  scheme  would  not  answer; 
and  all  the  other  schemes  I  ever  heard  pro- 
pounded would  depress  some  elements  of 
goodness  just  as  much  as  they  encouraged 
others.  Now  I  know  that  in  thus  turning 
Conservative  with  years,  1  am  going  through 
the  normal  cycle  of  change  and  travelling 
in  the  common  orbit  of  men's  opinions.  1 
submit  to  this,  as  I  would  submit  to  gout 
or  gray  hair,  as  a  concomitant  of  growing 
age  or  else  of  failing  animal  heat;  but  I  do 
not  acknowledge  that  it  is  necessarily  a 
change  for  the  better  —  1  daresay  it  is  de- 
plorably for  the  worse.  I  have  no  choice  in 
the  business,  and  can  no  more  resist  this 
tendency  of  my  mind  than  I  could  prevent 
my  body  from  beginning  to  totter  and  de- 
cay. If  I  am  spared  (as  the  phrase  runs)  1 
shall  doubtless  outlive  some  troublesome 
desires;  but  I  am  in  no  hurry  about  that; 
82 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

nor,  when  the  time  comes,  shall  I  plume 
myself  on  the  immunity.  Just  in  the  same 
way,  I  do  not  greatly  pride  myself  on 
having  outlived  my  belief  in  the  fairy  tales 
of  Socialism.  Old  people  have  faults  of  their 
own;  they  tend  to  become  cowardly,  nig- 
gardly, and  suspicious.  Whether  from  the 
growth  of  experience  or  the  decline  of  ani- 
mal heat,  I  see  that  age  leads  to  these  and 
certain  other  faults;  and  it  follows,  of 
course,  that  while  in  one  sense  I  hope  1  am 
journeying  towards  the  truth,  in  another  I 
am  indubitably  posting  towards  these  forms 
and  sources  of  error. 

As  we  go  catching  and  catching  at  this  or 
that  corner  ofknowledge,  now  getting  a  fore- 
sight of  generous  possibilities,  now  chilled 
with  a  glimpse  of  prudence,  we  may  com- 
pare the  headlong  course  of  our  years  to  a 
swift  torrent  in  which  a  man  is  carried 
away;  now  he  is  dashed  against  a  boulder, 
now  he  grapples  for  a  moment  to  a  trailing 
spray;  at  the  end,  he  is  hurled  out  and  over- 
whelmed in  a  dark  and  bottomless  ocean. 
We  have  no  more  than  glimpses  and  touches ; 
we  are  torn  away  from  our  theories;  we  are 

83 


I 


CRABBED  AGE  AND  YO UTH 

spun  round  and  round  and  shown  this  or 
the  other  view  of  life,  until  only  fools  or 
knaves  can  hold  to  their  opinions.  We  take 
a  sight  at  a  condition  in  life,  and  say  we 
have  studied  it;  our  most  elaborate  view  is 
no  more  than  an  impression.  If  we  had 
breathing  space,  we  should  take  the  occa- 
sion to  modify  and  adjust;  but  at  this  break- 
neck hurry,  we  are  no  sooner  boys  than  we 
are  adult,  no  sooner  in  love  than  married  or 
jilted,  no  sooner  one  age  than  we  begin  to 
be  another,  and  no  sooner  in  the  fulness  of 
our  manhood  than  we  begin  to  decline  to- 
wards the  grave.  It  is  in  vain  to  seek  for 
consistency  or  exped  clear  and  stable  views 
in  a  medium  so  perturbed  and  fleeting. 
This  is  no  cabinet  science,  in  which  things 
are  tested  to  a  scruple;  we  theorise  with  a 
pistol  to  our  head;  we  are  confronted  with 
a  new  set  of  conditions  on  which  we  have 
not  only  to  pass  a  judgment,  but  to  take 
a6lion,  before  the  hour  is  at  an  end.  And  we 
cannot  even  regard  ourselves  as  a  constant; 
in  this  flux  of  things,  our  identity  itself  seems 
in  a  perpetual  variation ;  and  not  infrequently 
we  find  our  own  disguise  the  strangest  in 


CRABBED  AGE  AND  YO  UTH 

the  masquerade.  In  the  course  of  time,  we 
grow  to  love  things  we  hated  and  hate  things 
we  loved.  Milton  is  not  so  dull  as  he  once 
was,  nor  perhaps  Ainsworth  so  amusing. 
It  is  decidedly  harder  to  climb  trees,  and  not 
nearly  so  hard  to  sit  still.  There  is  no  use 
pretending;  even  the  thrice  royal  game  of 
hide  and  seek  has  somehow  lost  in  zest.  All 
our  attributes  are  modified  or  changed;  and 
it  will  be  a  poor  account  of  us  if  our  views 
do  not  modify  and  change  in  a  proportion. 
To  hold  the  same  views  at  forty  as  we  held 
at  twenty  is  to  have  been  stupefied  for  a 
score  of  years,  and  take  rank,  not  as  a 
prophet,  but  as  an  unteachable  brat,  well 
birched  and  none  the  wiser.  It  is  as  if  a 
ship  captain  should  sail  to  India  from  the 
Port  of  London;  and  having  brought  a  chart 
of  the  Thames  on  deck  at  his  first  setting 
out,  should  obstinately  use  no  other  for  the 
whole  voyage. 

And  mark  you,  it  would  be  no  less  fool- 
ish to  begin  at  Gravesend  with  a  chart  of 
the  Red  Sea.  Si  Jeimesse  savait,  si  VieiUesse 
pouvait,  is  a  very  pretty  sentiment,  but  not 
necessarily  right.  In  five  cases  out  of  ten, 

85 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

it  is  not  so  much  that  the  young  people 
do  not  know,  as  that  they  do  not  choose. 
There  is  something  irreverent  in  the  specu- 
lation, but  perhaps  the  want  of  power  has 
more  to  do  with  the  wise  resolutions  of  age 
than  we  are  always  willing  to  admit.  It 
would  be  an  instructive  experiment  to  make 
an  old  man  young  again  and  leave  him  all 
his  savoir,  I  scarcely  think  he  would  put 
his  money  in  the  Savings  Bank  after  all;  I 
doubt  if  he  would  be  such  an  admirable  son 
as  we  are  led  to  expecft ;  and  as  for  his  con- 
dud  in  love,  I  believe  firmly  he  would  out- 
Herod  Herod,  and  put  the  whole  of  his  new 
compeersto  theblush.  Prudence  isawooden 
Juggernaut,  before  whom  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin walks  with  the  portly  air  of  a  high  priest, 
and  after  whom  dances  many  a  successful 
merchant  in  the  character  of  Atys.  But  it  is 
not  a  deity  to  cultivate  in  youth.  If  a  man 
lives  to  any  considerable  age,  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  he  laments  his  imprudences,  but 
I  notice  he  often  laments  his  youth  a  deal 
more  bitterly  and  with  a  more  genuine  in- 
tonation. 

It  is  customary  to  say  that  age  should  be 
86 


CRABBED  AGE  AND  YO UTH 

considered,  because  it  comes  last.  It  seems 
just  as  much  to  the  point,  that  youth  comes 
first.  And  the  scale  fairly  kicks  the  beam,  if 
you  go  on  to  add  that  age,  in  a  majority  of 
cases,  never  comes  at  all.  Disease  and  acci- 
dent make  short  work  of  even  the  most 
prosperous  persons;  death  costs  nothing, 
and  the  expense  of  a  headstone  is  an  incon- 
siderable trifle  to  the  happy  heir.  To  be 
suddenly  snuffed  out  in  the  middle  of  am- 
bitious schemes,  is  tragical  enough  at  best; 
but  when  a  man  has  been  grudging  himself 
his  own  life  in  the  meanwhile,  and  saving 
up  everything  for  the  festival  that  was  never 
to  be,  it  becomes  that  hysterically  moving 
sort  of  tragedy  which  lies  on  the  confines  of 
farce.  The  vidim  is  dead  —  and  he  has  cun- 
ningly overreached  himself:  a  combination 
of  calamities  none  the  less  absurd  for  being 
grim.  To  husband  a  favourite  claret  until  the 
batch  turns  sour,  is  not  at  all  an  artful  stroke 
of  policy ;  and  how  much  more  with  a  whole 
cellar  —  a  whole  bodily  existence  !  People 
may  lay  down  their  lives  with  cheerfulness 
in  the  sure  expedation  of  a  blessed  immor- 
tality ;  but  that  is  a  different  affair  from  giv- 

87 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

ing  up  youth  with  all  its  admirable  pleasures, 
in  the  hope  of  a  better  quality  of  gruel  in  a 
more  than  problematical,  nay,  more  than 
improbable,  old  age.  We  should  not  com- 
pliment a  hungry  man,  who  should  refuse  a 
whole  dinner  and  reserve  all  his  appetite  for 
the  dessert,  before  he  knew  whether  there 
was  to  be  any  dessert  or  not.  If  there  be  such 
a  thing  as  imprudence  in  the  world,  we 
surely  have  it  here.  We  sail  in  leaky  bot- 
toms and  on  great  and  perilous  waters;  and 
to  take  a  cue  from  the  dolorous  old  naval  bal- 
lad, we  have  heard  the  mermaidens  sing- 
ing, and  know  that  we  shall  never  see  dry 
land  any  more.  Old  and  young,  we  are  all 
on  our  last  cruise.  If  there  is  a  fill  of  tobacco 
among  the  crew,  for  God's  sake  pass  it 
round,  and  let  us  have  a  pipe  before  we  go  ! 
Indeed,  by  the  report  of  our  elders,  this 
nervous  preparation  for  old  age  is  only 
trouble  thrown  away.  We  fall  on  guard, 
and  after  all  it  is  a  friend  who  comes  to 
meet  us.  After  the  sun  is  down  and  the 
west  faded,  the  heavens  begin  to  fill  with 
shining  stars.  So,  as  we  grow  old,  a  sort  of 
equable  jog-trot  of  feeling  is  substituted  for 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

the  violent  ups  and  downs  of  passion  and 
disgust;  the  same  influence  that  restrains 
our  hopes,  quiets  our  apprehensions;  if  the 
pleasures  are  less  intense,  the  troubles  are 
milder  and  more  tolerable;  and  in  a  word, 
this  period  for  which  we  are  asked  to  hoard 
up  everything  as  for  a  time  of  famine,  is,  in 
its  own  right,  the  richest,  easiest,  and  hap- 
piest of  life.  Nay,  by  managing  its  own 
work  and  following  its  own  happy  inspira- 
tion, youth  is  doing  the  best  it  can  to  en- 
dow the  leisure  of  age.  A  full,  busy  youth 
is  your  only  prelude  to  a  self-contained  and 
independent  age;  and  the  muff  inevitably 
develops  into  the  bore.  There  are  not  many 
Doctor  Johnsons,  to  set  forth  upon  their 
first  romantic  voyage  at  sixty-four.  If  we 
wish  to  scale  Mont  Blanc  or  visit  a  thieves' 
kitchen  in  the  East  End,  to  go  down  in  a 
diving  dress  or  up  in  a  balloon,  we  must  be 
about  it  while  we  are  still  young.  It  will  not 
do  to  delay  until  we  are  clogged  with  pru- 
dence and  limping  with  rheumatism,  and 
people  begin  to  ask  us:  ''What  does  Grav- 
ity out  of  bed  ?"  Youth  is  the  time  to  go 
flashing   from   one    end   of  the  world   to 

89 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

the  other  both  in  mind  and  body;  to  try  the 
manners  of  different  nations;  to  hear  the 
chimes  at  midnight;  to  see  sunrise  in  town 
and  country;  to  be  converted  at  a  revival; 
to  circumnavigate  the  metaphysics,  write 
halting  verses,  run  a  mile  to  see  a  fire,  and 
wait  all  day  long  in  the  theatre  to  applaud 
Hernani.  There  is  some  meaning  in  the  old 
theory  about  wild  oats;  and  a  man  who  has 
not  had  his  green-sickness  and  got  done 
with  it  for  good,  is  as  little  to  be  depended 
on  as  an  unvaccinated  infant.  'Mt  is  extra- 
ordinary," said  Lord  Beaconsfield,  one  of 
the  brightest  and  best  preserved  of  youths 
up  to  the  date  of  his  last  novel,'  *'  it  is  ex- 
traordinary how  hourly  and  how  violently 
change  the  feelings  of  an  inexperienced 
young  man."  And  this  mobility  is  a  special 
talent  entrusted  to  his  care;  a  sort  of  inde- 
strudible  virginity;  a  magic  armor,  with 
which  he  can  pass  unhurt  through  great 
dangers  and  come  unbedaubed  out  of  the 
miriest  passages.  Let  him  voyage,  speculate, 
see  all  that  he  can, do  all  that  he  may ;  his  soul 
has  as  many  lives  as  a  cat;  he  will  live  in  all 

*  Lothair. 
90 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

weathers,  and  never  be  a  halfpenny  the 
worse.  Those  who  go  to  the  devil  in  youth, 
with  anything  like  a  fair  chance,  were  prob- 
ably little  worth  saving  from  the  first;  they 
must  have  been  feeble  fellows  —  creatures 
made  of  putty  and  pack-thread,  without 
steel  or  fire,  anger  or  true  joyfulness,  in 
their  composition ;  we  may  sympathise  with 
their  parents,  but  there  is  not  much  cause 
to  go  into  mourning  for  themselves;  for  to 
be  quite  honest,  the  weak  brother  is  the 
worst  of  mankind. 

When  the  old  man  waggles  his  head  and 
says,  ''Ah,  so  I  thought  when  1  was  your 
age,"  he  has  proved  the  youth's  case. 
Doubtless,  whether  from  growth  of  expe- 
rience or  decline  of  animal  heat,  he  thinks  so 
no  longer;  but  he  thought  so  while  he  was 
young;  and  all  men  have  thought  so  while 
they  were  young,  since  there  was  dew  in 
the  morning  or  hawthorn  in  May;  and  here 
is  another  young  man  adding  his  vote  to 
those  of  previous  generations  and  rivetting 
another  link  to  the  chain  of  testimony.  It  is 
as  natural  and  as  right  for  a  young  man  to 
be  imprudent  and  exaggerated,  to  live  in 

91 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YOUTH 

swoops  and  circles,  and  beat  about  his  cage 
like  any  other  wild  thing  newly  captured, 
as  it  is  for  old  men  to  turn  gray,  or  mothers 
to  love  their  offspring,  or  heroes  to  die  for 
something  worthier  than  their  lives. 

By  way  of  an  apologue  for  the  aged, 
when  they  feel  more  than  usually  tempted 
to  offer  their  advice,  let  me  recommend  the 
following  little  tale.  A  child  who  had  been 
remarkal3ly  fond  of  toys  (and  in  particular  of 
lead  soldiers)  found  himself  growing  to  the 
level  of  acknowledged  boyhood  without  any 
abatement  of  his  childish  taste.  He  was  thir- 
teen; already  he  had  been  taunted  for  dal- 
lying overlong  about  the  playbox;  he  had 
to  blush  if  he  was  found  among  his  lead 
soldiers;  the  shades  of  the  prison-house 
were  closing  about  him  with  a  vengeance. 
There  is  nothing  more  difficult  than  to  put 
the  thoughts  of  children  into  the  language 
of  their  elders;  but  this  is  the  effeft  of  his 
meditations  at  this  jundure:  ''  Plainly,"  he 
said,  "  I  must  give  up  my  playthings,  in  the 
meanwhile,  since  I  am  not  in  a  position  to  se- 
cure myself  against  idle  jeers.  At  the  same 
time,  1  am  sure  that  playthings  are  the  very 

Q2 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

pick  of  life;  all  people  give  them  up  out  of 
the  same  pusillanimous  respe(5l  for  those 
who  are  a  little  older;  and  if  they  do  not  re- 
turn to  them  as  soon  as  they  can,  it  is  only 
because  they  grow  stupid  and  forget.  I 
shall  be  wiser;  1  shall  conform  for  a  little  to 
the  ways  of  their  foolish  world ;  but  so  soon 
as  I  have  made  enough  money,  I  shall  retire 
and  shut  myself  up  among  my  playthings 
until  the  day  I  die."  Nay,  as  he  was  passing 
in  the  train  along  the  Esterel  mountains  be- 
tween Cannes  and  Frejus,  he  remarked  a 
pretty  house  in  an  orange  garden  at  the  angle 
of  a  bay,  and  decided  that  this  should  be  his 
Happy  Valley.  Astrea  Redux ;  childhood  was 
to  come  again  !  The  idea  has  an  air  of  sim- 
ple nobility  to  me,  not  unworthy  of  Cincin- 
natus.  And  yet,  as  the  reader  has  probably 
anticipated,  itis  neverlikely  to  becarriedinto 
effed.  There  was  a  worm  i'  the  bud,  a  fatal 
error  in  the  premises.  Childhood  must  pass 
away,  and  then  youth,  as  surely  as  age  ap- 
proaches. The  true  wisdom  is  to  be  always 
seasonable,  and  to  change  with  a  good  grace 
in  changing  circumstances.  To  love  play 
things  well  as  a  child,  to  lead  an  adventurous 

91 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

and  honourable  youth,  and  to  settle  when 
the  time  arrives,  into  a  green  and  smiling 
age,  is  to  be  a  good  artist  in  life  and  deserve 
well  of  yourself  and  your  neighbour. 

You  need  repent  none  of  your  youthful 
vagaries.  They  may  have  been  over  the  score 
on  one  side,  just  as  those  of  age  are  proba- 
bly over  the  score  on  the  other.  But  they 
had  a  point;  they  not  only  befitted  your 
age  and  expressed  its  attitude  and  passions, 
but  they  had  a  relation  to  what  was  out- 
side of  you,  and  implied  criticisms  on  the 
existing  state  of  things,  which  you  need  not 
allow  to  have  been  undeserved,  because  you 
now  see  that  they  were  partial.  All  error, 
not  merely  verbal,  is  a  strong  way  of  stat- 
ing that  the  current  truth  is  incomplete.  The 
follies  of  youth  have  a  basis  in  sound  reason, 
just  as  much  as  the  embarrassing  questions 
put  by  babes  and  sucklings.  Their  most  anti- 
social a(fts  indicate  the  defeds  of  our  society. 
When  the  torrent  sweeps  the  man  against 
a  boulder,  you  must  expert  him  to  scream, 
and  you  need  not  be  surprised  if  the  scream 
is  sometimes  a  theory.  Shelley,  chafing  at 
the  Church  of  England,  discovered  the  cure 
94 


CRABBED  AGE  AND  YO UTH 

of  all  evils  in  universal  atheism.  Generous 
lads  irritated  at  the  injustices  of  society, 
see  nothing  for  it  but  the  abolishment  of 
everything  and  Kingdom  Come  of  anarchy. 
Shelley  was  a  young  fool ;  so  are  these  cock- 
sparrow  revolutionaries.  But  it  is  better  to 
be  a  fool  than  to  be  dead.  It  is  better  to 
emit  a  scream  in  the  shape  of  a  theory  than 
to  be  entirely  insensible  to  the  jars  and  in- 
congruities of  life  and  take  everything  as  it 
comes  in  a  forlorn  stupidity.  Some  people 
swallow  the  universe  like  a  pill;  they  travel 
on  through  the  world,  like  smiling  images 
pushed  from  behind.  For  God's  sake  give 
me  the  young  man  who  has  brains  enough 
to  make  a  fool  of  himself!  As  for  the  others, 
the  irony  of  fa6ts  shall  take  it  out  of  their 
hands,  and  make  fools  of  them  in  down- 
right earnest,  ere  the  farce  be  over.  There 
shall  be  such  a  mopping  and  a  mowing  at 
the  last  day,  and  such  blushing  and  con- 
fusion of  countenance  for  all  those  who  have 
been  wise  in  their  own  esteem,  and  have 
not  learnt  the  rough  lessons  that  youth 
hands  on  to  age.  If  we  are  indeed  here  to 
perfed  and  complete  our  own  natures,  and 

95 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

grow  larger,  stronger,  and  more  sympathe- 
tic against  some  nobler  career  in  the  future, 
we  had  all  best  bestir  ourselves  to  the  ut- 
most while  we  have  the  time.  To  equip  a 
dull,  respectable  person  with  wings  would 
be  but  to  make  a  parody  of  an  angel. 

In  short,  if  youth  is  not  quite  right  in  its 
opinions,  there  is  a  strong  probability  that 
age  is  not  much  more  so.  Undying  hope  is 
co-ruler  of  the  human  bosom  with  infallible 
credulity.  A  man  finds  he  has  been  wrong 
at  every  preceding  stage  of  his  career,  only 
to  deduce  the  astonishing  conclusion  that 
he  is  at  last  entirely  right.  Mankind,  after 
centuries  of  failure,  are  still  upon  the  eve 
of  a  thoroughly  constitutional  millennium. 
Since  we  have  explored  the  maze  so  long 
without  result,  it  follows,  for  poor  human 
reason,  that  we  cannot  have  to  explore  much 
longer;  close  by  must  be  the  centre,  with  a 
champagne  luncheon  and  a  piece  of  orna- 
mental water.  How  if  there  were  no  centre 
at  all,  but  just  one  alley  after  another,  and 
the  whole  world  a  labyrinth  without  end  or 
issue  ? 

I  overheard  the  other  day  a  scrap  of  con- 
96 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

versation,  which  I  take  the  liberty  to  repro- 
duce. ''What  I  advance  is  true,"  said  one. 
"But  not  the  whole  truth,"  answered  the 
other.  *  'Sir, "  returned  the  first  (and  it  seemed 
to  me  there  was  a  smack  of  Dr.  Johnson 
in  the  speech),  "Sir,  there  is  no  such  thing 
as  whole  truth!"  Indeed,  there  is  nothing 
so  evident  in  life  as  that  there  are  two  sides 
to  a  question.  History  is  one  long  illustra- 
tion. The  forces  of  nature  are  engaged,  day 
by  day,  in  cudgelling  it  into  our  backward 
intelligences.  We  never  pause  for  a  mo- 
ment's consideration,  but  we  admit  it  as  an 
axiom.  An  enthusiast  sways  humanity  ex- 
actly by  disregarding  this  great  truth,  and 
dinning  it  into  our  ears  that  this  or  that  ques- 
tion has  only  one  possible  solution;  and 
your  enthusiast  is  a  fine  florid  fellow,  domi- 
nates things  for  a  while  and  shakes  the 
world  out  of  a  doze;  but  when  once  he  is 
gone,  an  army  of  quiet  and  uninfluential  peo- 
ple set  to  work  to  remind  us  of  the  other 
side  and  demolish  the  generous  imposture. 
While  Calvin  is  putting  everybody  exadly 
right  in  his  Institutes,  and  hot-headed  Knox 
is  thundering  in  the  pulpit,  Montaigne  is  al- 

97 


CRABBED  A  GE  AND  YO  UTH 

ready  looking  at  the  other  side  in  his  library 
in  Perigord,  and  prediding  that  they  will 
find  as  much  to  quarrel  about  in  the  Bible 
as  they  had  found  already  in  the  Church. 
Age  may  have  one  side,  but  assuredly  Youth 
has  the  other.  There  is  nothing  more  certain 
than  that  both  are  right,  except  perhaps  that 
both  are  wrong.  Let  them  agree  to  differ; 
for  who  knows  but  what  agreeing  to  differ 
may  not  be  a  form  of  agreement  rather  than 
a  form  of  difference  ? 

I  suppose  it  is  written  that  any  one  who 
sets  up  for  a  bit  of  a  philosopher,  must  con- 
tradid  himself  to  his  very  face.  For  here 
have  I  fairly  talked  myself  into  thinking  that 
we  have  the  whole  thing  before  us  at  last; 
that  there  is  no  answer  to  the  mystery,  ex- 
cept that  there  are  as  many  as  you  please, 
that  there  is  no  centre  to  the  maze  because, 
like  the  famous  sphere,  its  centre  is  every- 
where ;  and  that  agreeing  to  differ  with  every 
ceremony  of  politeness,  is  the  only  ''one 
undisturbed  song  of  pure  consent"  to  which 
we  are  ever  likely  to  lend  our  musical  voices. 


98 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

*'  Boswell:  We  grow  weary  when  idle." 
"Johnson:  That  is,  sir,  because  others  being  busy,  we 
want  company;  but  if  we  were  idle,  there  would  be  no 
growing  weary ;  we  should  all  entertain  one  another.  '* 

UST  now,  when  every  one  is  bound, 
under  pain  of  a  decree  in  absence 
conviding  them  of  lese-respe^ta- 
bility,  to  enter  on  some  lucrative  profession, 
and  labour  therein  with  something  not  far 
short  of  enthusiasm,  a  cry  from  the  opposite 
party  who  are  content  when  they  have 
enough,  and  like  to  look  on  and  enjoy  in  the 
meanwhile,  savours  a  little  of  bravado  and 
gasconade.  And  yet  this  should  not  be. 
Idleness  so  called,  which  does  not  consist 
in  doing  nothing,  but  in  doing  a  great  deal 
not  recop:nised  in  the  dogmatic  formularies 
of  the  ruhng  class,  has  as  good  a  right  to 
state  its  position  as  industry  itself.  It  is  ad- 
mitted that  the  presence  of  people  who  re- 
fuse to  enter  in  the  great  handicap  race  for 

99 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

sixpenny  pieces,  is  at  once  an  insult  and  a 
disenchantment  for  those  who  do.  A  fine 
fellow  (as  we  see  so  many)  takes  his  deter- 
mination, votes  for  the  sixpences,  and  in  the 
emphatic  Americanism,  ''goes  for"  them. 
And  while  such  an  one  is  ploughing  dis- 
tressfully up  the  road,  it  is  not  hard  to  under- 
stand his  resentment,  when  he  perceives 
cool  persons  in  the  meadows  by  the  way- 
side, lying  with  a  handkerchief  over  their 
ears  and  a  glass  at  their  elbow.  Alexander 
is  touched  in  a  very  delicate  place  by  the 
disregard  of  Diogenes.  Where  was  the  glory 
of  having  taken  Rome  for  these  tumuhuous 
barbarians,  who  poured  into  the  Senate 
house,  and  found  the  Fathers  sitting  silent 
and  unmoved  by  their  success  .^  It  is  a  sore 
thing  to  have  laboured  along  and  scaled  the 
arduous  hilltops,  and  when  all  is  done,  fmd 
humanity  indifferent  to  your  achievement. 
Hence  physicists  condemn  the  unphysical; 
financiers  have  only  a  superficial  toleration 
for  those  who  know  little  of  stocks ;  liters:  7 
persons  despise  the  unlettered;  and  people 
of  all  pursuits  combine  to  disparage  those 
who  have  none. 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

But  though  this  is  one  difficulty  of  the 
subjed,  it  is  not  the  greatest.  You  could  not 
be  put  in  prison  for  speaking  against  indus- 
try, but  you  can  be  sent  to  Coventry  for 
speaking  like  a  fool.  The  greatest  difficulty 
with  most  subje(5ls  is  to  do  them  well ;  there- 
fore, please  to  remember  this  is  an  apology. 
It  is  certain  that  much  may  be  judiciously 
argued  in  favour  of  diligence;  only  there  is 
something  to  be  said  against  it,  and  that  is 
what,  on  the  present  occasion,  1  have  to  say. 
To  state  one  argument  isnotnecessarilyto  be 
deaf  to  all  others,  and  that  a  man  has  written 
a  bookof  travels  in  Montenegro,  is  no  reason 
whyheshouldneverhavebeento  Richmond. 

It  is  surely  beyond  a  doubt  that  people 
should  be  a  good  deal  idle  in  youth.  For 
though  here  and  there  a  Lord  Macaulay  may 
escape  from  school  honours  with  all  his  wits 
about  him,  most  boys  pay  so  dear  for  their 
medals  that  they  never  afterwards  have  a 
shot  in  their  locker,  and  begin  the  world 
bankrupt.  And  the  same  holds  true  during 
all  the  time  a  lad  is  educating  himself,  or 
suffering  others  to  educate  him.  It  must  have 
been  a  very  foolish  old  gentleman  who  ad- 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

dressed  Johnson  at  Oxford  in  these  words: 
'*  Young  man,  ply  yourbook  diligently  now, 
and  acquire  a  stock  of  knowledge ;  for  when 
years  come  upon  you,  you  will  find  that 
poring  upon  books  will  be  but  an  irksome 
task. "  The  old  gentleman  seems  to  have  been 
unaware  that  many  other  thingsbesides  read- 
ing grow  irksome,  and  not  a  few  become 
impossible,  by  the  time  a  man  has  to  use 
spedacles  and  cannot  walk  without  a  stick. 
Books  are  good  enough  in  their  own  way, 
but  they  are  a  mighty  bloodless  substitute 
for  life.  It  seems  a  pity  to  sit,  like  the  Lady 
of  Shalott,  peering  into  a  mirror,  with  your 
back  turned  on  all  the  bustle  and  glamour  of 
reality.  And  if  a  man  reads  very  hard,  as  the 
old  anecdote  reminds  us,  he  will  have  little 
time  for  thought. 

If  you  look  back  on  your  own  education, 
I  am  sure  it  will  not  be  the  full,  vivid,  in- 
stru6tive  hours  of  truantry  that  you  regret; 
you  would  rather  cancel  some  lack-lustre 
periods  between  sleep  and  waking  in  the 
class.  For  my  own  part  1  have  attended  a 
good  many  lecflures  in  my  time.  I  still  re- 
member that  the  spinning  of  a  top  is  a  case 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

of  Kinetic  Stability.  I  still  remember  that 
Emphyteusis  is  not  a  disease,  nor  Stillicide 
a  crime.  But  though  I  would  not  willingly 
part  with  such  scraps  of  science,  I  do  not 
set  the  same  store  by  them  as  by  certain 
other  odds  and  ends  that  I  came  by  in  the 
open  street  while  I  was  playing  truant.  This 
is  not  the  moment  to  dilate  on  that  mighty 
place  of  education,  which  was  the  favourite 
school  of  Dickens  and  of  Balzac,  and  turns 
out  yearly  many  inglorious  masters  in  the 
Science  of  the  Aspeds  of  Life.  Suffice  it  to 
say  this :  if  a  lad  does  not  learn  in  the  streets, 
it  is  because  he  has  no  faculty  of  learning. 
Nor  is  the  truant  always  in  the  streets,  for 
if  he  prefers,  he  may  go  out  by  the  gar- 
denedsuburbs  into  thecountry.  He  may  pitch 
on  some  tuft  of  lilacs  over  a  burn,  and  smoke 
innumerable  pipes  to  the  tune  of  the  water 
on  the  stones.  A  bird  will  sing  in  thethicket. 
And  there  he  may  fall  into  a  vein  of  kindly 
thought,  and  see  things  in  a  new  perspec- 
tive. Why,  if  this  be  not  education,  what  is  ? 
We  may  conceive  Mr.  Worldly  Wiseman 
accosting  such  an  one,  and  the  conversa- 
tion that  should  thereupon  ensue:  — 

103 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

**How  now,  young  fellow,  what  dost 
inou  here  ?" 

**  Truly,  sir,  I  take  mine  ease." 

"Is  not  this  the  hour  of  the  class?  and 
should'st  thou  not  be  plying  thy  Book  with 
diligence,  to  the  end  thou  mayest  obtain 
knowledge  ?" 

"Nay,  but  thus  also  I  follow  after  Learn- 
ing, by  your  leave." 

"Learning,  quotha!  After  what  fashion, 
f  pray  thee  }  Is  it  mathematics  ?" 

'*No,  to  be  sure." 

"Is  it  metaphysics  ?" 

"Nor  that." 

"Is  it  some  language  ?" 

"Nay,  it  is  no  language." 

"Is  it  a  trade  .?" 

"Nor  a  trade  neither." 

"Why,  then,  what  is't?" 

"Indeed,  sir,  as  a  time  may  soon  come 
for  me  to  go  upon  Pilgrimage,  I  am  desirous 
to  note  what  is  commonly  done  by  persons 
in  my  case,  and  where  are  the  ugliest 
Sloughs  and  Thickets  on  the  Road;  as  also, 
what  manner  of  Staff  is  of  the  best  service. 
Moreover,  I  lie  here,  by  this  water,  to  learn 
104 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

by  root-of-heart  a  lesson  which  my  master 
teaches  me  to  call  Peace,  or  Contentment." 

Hereupon  Mr.  Worldly  Wiseman  was 
much  commoved  with  passion,  and  shaking 
his  cane  with  a  very  threatful  countenance, 
broke  forth  upon  this  wise:  **  Learning, 
quotha!"  said  he;  '' I  would  have  all  such 
rogues  scourged  by  the  Hangman!" 

And  so  he  would  go  his  way,  ruffling  out 
his  cravat  with  a  crackle  of  starch,  like  a  tur- 
key when  it  spread  its  feathers. 

Now  this,  of  Mr.  Wiseman's,  is  the  com- 
mon opinion.  A  fad  is  not  called  a  fad:,  but 
a  piece  of  gossip,  if  it  does  not  fall  into  one 
of  your  scholastic  categories.  An  inquiry 
must  be  in  some  acknowledged  direction, 
with  a  name  to  go  by;  or  else  you  are  not 
inquiring  at  all,  only  lounging;  and  the 
workhouse  is  too  good  for  you.  It  is  sup- 
posed that  all  knowledge  is  at  the  bottom 
of  a  well,  or  the  far  end  of  a  telescope. 
Sainte-Beuve,  as  he  grew  older,  came  to  re- 
gard all  experience  as  a  single  great  book,  in 
which  to  study  for  a  few  years  ere  we  go 
hence ;  and  it  seemed  all  one  to  him  whether 
you  should  read  in  Chapter  xx.,  which  is  the 

105 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

differential  calculus,  or  in  Chapter  xxxix., 
which  is  hearing  the  band  play  in  the  gar- 
dens. As  a  matter  of  fad,  an  intelligent  per- 
son, looking  out  of  his  eyes  and  hearkening 
in  his  ears,  with  a  smile  on  his  face  all  the 
time,  will  getmore  true  education  than  many 
another  in  a  life  of  heroic  vigils.  There  is 
certainly  some  chill  and  arid  knowledge  to 
be  found  upon  the  summits  of  formal  and  la- 
borious science;  but  it  is  all  round  about 
you,  and  for  the  trouble  of  looking,  that  you 
will  acquire  the  warm  and  palpitating  fa6ls 
of  life.  While  others  are  filling  their  memory 
with  a  lumber  of  words,  one-half  of  which 
they  will  forget  before  the  week  be  out,  your 
truant  may  learn  some  really  useful  art;  to 
play  the  fiddle,  to  know  a  good  cigar,  or  to 
speak  with  ease  and  opportunity  to  all  vari- 
eties of  men.  Many  who  have  ''plied  their 
book  diligently,"  and  know  all  about  some 
one  branch  or  another  of  accepted  lore,  come 
out  of  the  study  with  an  ancient  and  owl- 
like demeanour,  and  prove  dry,  stockish,  and 
dyspeptic  in  all  the  better  and  brighter  parts 
of  life.  Many  make  a  large  fortune,  who  re- 
main underbred  and  pathetically  stupid  to 
1 06 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

the  last.  And  meantime  there  goes  the  idler, 
who  began  life  along  with  them  —  by  your 
leave,  a  different  pidure.  He  has  had  time  to 
take  care  of  his  health  and  his  spirits ;  he  has 
been  a  great  deal  in  the  open  air,  which  is 
the  most  salutary  of  all  things  for  both  body 
and  mind ;  and  if  he  has  never  read  the  great 
Book  in  very  recondite  places,  he  has  dipped 
into  it  and  skimmed  it  over  to  excellent  pur- 
pose. Might  not  the  student  afford  some 
Hebrew  roots,  and  the  business  man  some 
of  his  half-crowns,  for  a  share  of  the  idler's 
knowledge  of  life  at  large,  and  Art  of  Living.^ 
Nay,  and  the  idler  has  another  and  more 
important  quality  than  these.  I  mean  his 
wisdom.  He  who  has  much  looked  on  at 
the  childish  satisfaction  of  other  people  in 
their  hobbies,  will  regard  his  own  with  only 
a  very  ironical  indulgence.  He  will  not  be 
heard  among  the  dogmatists.  He  will  have 
a  great  and  cool  allowance  for  all  sorts  of 
people  and  opinions.  If  he  fmds  no  out-of- 
the-way  truths,  hewill  identify  himself  with 
no  very  burning  falsehood.  His  way  takes 
him  along  a  by-road,  not  much  frequented^ 
but  very  even  and  pleasant,  which  is  called 

107 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

Commonplace  Lane,  and  leads  to  the  Belve- 
dere of  Commonsense.  Thence  he  shall  com- 
mand an  agreeable,  if  no  very  noble  pros- 
pect; and  while  others  behold  the  East  and 
West,  the  Devi!  and  the  Sunrise,  he  will  be 
contentedly  aware  of  a  sort  of  morning  hour 
upon  all  sublunary  things,  with  an  army  of 
shadows  running  speedily  and  in  many  dif- 
ferent diredions  into  the  great  daylight  of 
Eternity.  The  shadows  and  the  generations, 
the  shrill  do6lors  and  the  plangent  wars,  go 
by  into  ultimate  silence  and  emptiness;  but 
underneath  all  this,  a  man  may  see,  out  of 
the  Belvedere  windows,  much  green  and 
peaceful  landscape;  many  firelit  parlours; 
good  people  laughing,  drinking,  and  mak- 
ing love  as  they  did  before  the  Flood  or  the 
French  Revolution;  and  the  old  shepherd 
telling  his  tale  under  the  hawthorn. 

Extreme  busyness,  whether  at  school  or 
college,  kirk  or  market,  is  a  symptom  of  de- 
ficient vitality;  and  a  faculty  for  idleness 
implies  a  catholic  appetite  and  a  strong 
sense  of  personal  identity.  There  is  a  sort  of 
dead-alive,  hackneyed  people  about,  who 
are  scarcely  conscious  of  living  except  in 
1 08 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

the  exercise  of  some  conventional  occupa* 
tion.  Bring  these  fellows  into  the  country, 
or  set  them  aboard  ship,  and  you  will  see 
how  they  pine  for  their  desk  or  their  study. 
They  have  no  curiosity;  they  cannot  give 
themselves  over  to  random  provocations; 
they  do  not  take  pleasure  in  the  exercise  of 
their  faculties  for  its  own  sake;  and  unless 
Necessity  lays  about  them  with  a  stick,  they 
will  even  stand  still.  It  is  no  good  speaking 
to  such  folk:  they  cannot  be  idle,  their  na- 
ture is  not  generous  enough;  and  they  pass 
those  hours  in  a  sort  of  coma,  which  are  not 
dedicated  to  furious  moiling  in  the  gold- 
mill.  When  they  do  not  require  to  go  to  the 
office,  when  they  are  not  hungry  and  have  no 
mind  to  drink,  the  whole  breathing  world 
is  a  blank  to  them.  If  they  have  to  wait  an 
hour  or  so  for  a  train,  they  fall  into  a  stupid 
trance  with  their  eyes  open.  To  see  them, 
you  would  suppose  there  was  nothing  to 
look  at  and  no  one  to  speak  with;  you 
would  imagine  they  were  paralysed  or  alien- 
ated; and  yet  very  possibly  they  are  hard 
workers  in  their  own  way,  and  have  good 
eyesight  for  a  flaw  in  a  deed  or  a  turn  of  the 

109 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

market.  They  have  been  to  school  and  col- 
lege, but  all  the  time  they  had  their  eye  on 
the  medal;  they  have  gone  about  in  the 
world  and  mixed  with  clever  people,  but  all 
the  time  they  were  thinking  of  their  own 
affairs.  As  if  a  man's  soul  were  not  too  small 
to  begin  with,  they  have  dwarfed  and  nar- 
rowed theirs  by  a  life  of  all  work  and  no 
play ;  until  here  they  are  at  forty,  with  a  list- 
less attention,  a  mind  vacant  of  all  material 
of  amusement,  and  not  one  thought  to  rub 
against  another,  while  they  wait  for  the 
train.  Before  he  was  breeched,  he  might 
have  clambered  on  the  boxes;  when  he  was 
twenty,  he  would  have  stared  at  the  girls; 
but  now  the  pipe  is  smoked  out,  the  snuff- 
box empty,  and  my  gentleman  sits  bolt  up- 
right upon  a  bench,  with  lamentable  eyes. 
This  does  not  appear  to  me  as  being  Success 
in  Life. 

But  it  is  not  only  the  person  himself  who 
suffers  from  his  busy  habits,  but  his  wife  and 
children,  his  friends  and  relations,  and  down 
to  the  very  people  he  sits  with  in  a  railway 
carriage  or  an  omnibus.  Perpetual  devotion 
to  what  a  man  calls  his  business,  is  only  to  be 

NO 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

sustained  by  perpetual  negled  of  many  other 
things.  And  it  is  not  by  any  means  certain 
that  a  man's  business  is  the  most  important 
thing  he  has  to  do.  To  an  impartial  estimate 
it  will  seem  clear  that  many  of  the  wisest, 
most  virtuous,  and  most  beneficent  parts 
that  are  to  be  played  upon  the  Theatre  of 
Life  are  filled  by  gratuitous  performers,  and 
pass,  among  the  world  at  large,  as  phases 
of  idleness.  For  in  that  Theatre,  not  only  the 
walking  gentlemen,  singing  chambermaids, 
and  dihgent  fiddlers  in  the  orchestra,  but 
those  who  look  on  and  clap  their  hands 
from  the  benches,  do  really  play  a  part  and 
fulfil  important  offices  towards  the  general 
result.  You  are  no  doubt  very  dependent  on 
the  care  of  your  lawyer  and  stockbroker,  of 
the  guards  and  signalmen  who  convey  you 
rapidly  from  place  to  place,  and  the  police- 
men who  walk  the  streets  for  your  protec- 
tion ;  but  is  there  not  a  thought  of  gratitude 
in  your  heart  for  certain  other  benefadors 
who  set  you  smiling  when  they  fall  in  your 
way,  or  season  your  dinner  with  good  com- 
pany }  Colonel  Newcome  helped  to  lose  his 
friend's  money;  Fred  Bayham  had  an  ugly 

III 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

trick  of  borrowing  shirts;  and  yet  they  were 
better  people  to  fall  among  than  Mr.  Barnes. 
And  though  Falstaff  was  neither  sober  nor 
very  honest,  I  think  I  could  name  one  or 
two  long-faced  Barabbases  whom  the  world 
could  better  have  done  without.  Hazlitt 
mentions  that  he  was  more  sensible  of  obli- 
gation to  Northcote,  who  had  never  done 
him  anything  he  could  call  a  service,  than  to 
his  whole  circle  of  ostentatious  friends;  for 
he  thought  a  good  companion  emphatically 
the  greatest  benefadlor.  I  know  there  are 
people  in  the  world  who  cannot  feel  grate- 
ful unless  the  favour  has  been  done  them  at 
the  cost  of  pain  and  difficulty.  But  this  is  a 
churlish  disposition.  A  man  may  send  you 
six  sheets  of  letter-paper  covered  with  the 
most  entertaining  gossip,  or  you  may  pass 
half  an  hour  pleasantly,  perhaps  profitably, 
over  an  article  of  his;  do  you  think  the  ser- 
vice would  be  greater,  if  he  had  made  the 
manuscript  in  his  heart's  blood,  like  a  corn- 
pad  with  the  devil .?  Do  you  really  fancy  you 
should  be  more  beholden  to  your  corres- 
pondent, if  he  had  been  damning  you  all  the 
while  for  your  importunity  ?  Pleasures  are 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

more  beneficial  than  duties  because,  like  the 
quality  of  mercy,  they  are  not  strained,  and 
they  are  twice  blest.  There  must  always  be 
two  to  a  kiss,  and  there  may  be  a  score  in 
a  jest;  but  wherever  there  is  an  element  of 
sacrifice,  the  favour  is  conferred  with  pain, 
and,  among  generous  people,  received  with 
confusion.  There  is  no  duty  we  so  much  un- 
derrate as  the  duty  of  being  happy.  By  being 
happy,  we  sow  anonymous  benefits  upon 
the  world,  which  remain  unknown  even  to 
ourselves,  or  when  they  are  disclosed,  sur- 
prise nobody  so  much  as  the  benefactor. 
The  other  day,  a  ragged,  barefoot  boy  ran 
down  the  street  after  a  marble,  with  so  jolly 
an  air  that  he  set  every  one  he  passed  into 
a  good  humour;  one  of  these  persons,  who 
had  been  delivered  from  more  than  usually 
black  thoughts,  stopped  the  little  fellow  and 
gave  him  some  money  with  this  remark: 
**You  see  what  sometimes  comes  of  look- 
ing pleased. "  If  he  had  looked  pleased  before, 
he  had  now  to  look  both  pleased  and  mys^ 
tified.  For  my  part,  I  justify  this  encourage- 
ment of  smiling  rather  than  tearful  children; 
I  do  not  wish  to  pay  for  tears  anywhere  but 

115 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

upon  the  stage;  but  I  am  prepared  to  deal 
largely  in  the  opposite  commodity.  A  happy 
man  or  woman  is  a  better  thing  to  find  than 
a  five-pound  note.  He  or  she  is  a  radiating 
focus  of  goodwill;  and  their  entrance  into  a 
room  is  as  though  another  candle  had  been 
lighted.  We  need  not  care  whether  they  could 
prove  the  forty-seventh  proposition ;  they  do 
a  better  thing  than  that,  they  praftically 
demonstrate  the  great  Theorem  of  the  Live- 
ableness  of  Life.  Consequently,  if  a  person 
cannot  be  happy  without  remaining  idle, 
idle  he  should  remain.  It  is  a  revolutionary 
precept ;  but  thanks  to  hunger  and  the  work- 
house, one  not  easily  to  be  abused;  and 
within  practical  limits,  it  is  one  of  the  most 
incontestable  truths  in  the  whole  Body  of 
Morality.  Look  at  one  of  your  industrious 
fellows  for  a  moment,  I  beseech  you.  He 
sows  hurry  and  reaps  indigestion;  he  puts  a 
vast  deal  of  adivity  out  to  interest,  and  re- 
ceives a  large  measure  of  nervous  derange- 
ment in  return.  Either  he  absents  himself 
entirely  from  all  fellowship,  and  lives  a  re- 
cluse in  a  garret,  with  carpet  slippers  and  a 
leaden  inkpot;  or  he  comes  among  people 
114 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS   ' 

swiftly  and  bitterly,  in  a  contradion  of  his 
whole  nervous  system,  to  discharge  some 
temper  before  he  returns  to  work.  I  do  not 
care  how  much  or  how  well  he  works,  this 
fellow  is  an  evil  feature  in  other  people's 
lives.  They  would  be  happier  if  he  were 
dead.  They  could  easier  do  without  his  ser- 
vices in  the  Circumlocution  Office,  than  they 
can  tolerate  his  fradious  spirits.  He  poisons 
life  at  the  well-head.  It  is  better  to  be  beg- 
gared out  of  hand  by  a  scapegrace  nephew, 
than  daily  hag-ridden  by  a  peevish  uncle. 

And  what  in  God's  name,  is  all  this  pother 
about  .^  For  what  cause  do  they  embitter 
their  own  and  other  people's  lives .?  That  a 
man  should  publish  three  or  thirty  articles 
a  year,  that  he  should  finish  or  not  finish 
his  great  allegorical  pidure,  are  questions  of 
little  interest  to  the  world.  The  ranks  of  life 
are  full;  and  although  a  thousand  fall,  there 
are  always  some  to  go  into  the  breach. 
When  they  told  Joan  of  Arc  she  should  be 
at  home  minding  women's  work,  she  an- 
swered there  were  plenty  to  spin  and  wash. 
And  so,  even  with  your  own  rare  gifts! 
When  nature  is  "so  careless  of  the  single 

'•5 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

Jife,"  why  should  we  coddle  ourselves  into 
the  fancy  that  our  own  is  of  exceptional  im- 
portance ?  Suppose  Shakespeare  had  been 
knocked  on  the  head  some  dark  night  in  Sir 
Thomas  Lucy's  preserves,  the  world  would 
have  wagged  on  better  or  worse,  the  pitcher 
gone  to  the  well,  the  scythe  to  the  corn,  and 
the  student  to  his  book;  and  no  one  been 
any  the  wiser  of  the  loss.  There  are  not  many 
works  extant,  if  you  look  the  alternative  all 
over,  which  are  worth  the  price  of  a  pound 
of  tobacco  to  a  man  of  limited  means.  This 
is  a  sobering  reflection  for  the  proudest  of 
our  earthly  vanities.  Even  a  tobacconist  may, 
upon  consideration,  find  no  great  cause  for 
personal  vainglory  in  the  phrase;  for  al- 
though tobacco  is  an  admirable  sedative, 
the  qualities  necessary  for  retailing  it  are 
neither  rare  nor  precious  in  themselves. 
Alas  and  alas!  you  may  take  it  how  you 
will,  but  the  services  of  no  single  individ- 
ual are  indispensable.  Atlas  was  just  a  gen- 
tleman with  a  protraded  nightmare!  And 
yet  you  see  merchants  who  go  and  labour 
themselves  into  a  great  fortune  and  hence 
into  the  bankruptcy  court;  scribblers  who 
ii6 


AN  APOLOGY  FOR  IDLERS 

keep  scribbling  at  little  articles  until  their 
temper  is  a  cross  to  all  who  come  about 
them,  as  though  Pharaoh  should  set  the  Is- 
raelites to  make  a  pin  instead  of  a  pyramid; 
and  fine  young  men  who  work  themselves 
into  a  decline,  and  are  driven  off  in  a  hearse 
with  white  plumes  upon  it.  Would  you  not 
suppose  these  persons  had  been  whispered, 
by  the  Master  of  the  Ceremonies,  the  prom- 
ise of  some  momentous  destiny  ?  and  that 
this  lukewarm  bullet  on  which  they  play 
their  farces  was  the  bull's-eye  and  centre- 
point  of  all  the  universe  ?  And  yet  it  is  not 
so.  The  ends  for  which  they  give  away 
their  priceless  youth,  for  all  they  know,  may 
be  chimerical  or  hurtful ;  the  glory  and  riches 
they  exped  may  never  come,  or  may  find 
them  indifferent;  and  they  and  the  world 
they  Inhabit  are  so  inconsiderable  that  the 
mind  freezes  at  the  thought. 


117 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

|Y  a  curious  irony  of  fate,  the  places 
to  which  we  are  sent  when  heahh 
deserts  us  are  often  singularly  beau- 
tiful. Often^  too,  they  are  places  we  have 
visited  in  former  years,  or  seen  briefly  in 
passing  by,  and  kept  ever  afterwards  in 
pious  memory;  and  we  please  ourselves 
with  the  fancy  that  we  shall  repeat  many 
vivid  and  pleasurable  sensations,  and  take 
up  again  the  thread  of  our  enjoyment  in  the 
same  spirit  as  we  let  it  fall.  We  shall  now 
have  an  opportunity  of  finishing  many 
pleasant  excursions,  interrupted  of  yore  be- 
fore our  curiosity  was  fully  satisfied.  It  may 
be  that  we  have  kept  in  mind,  during  all 
these  years,  the  recolledion  of  some  valley 
into  which  we  have  just  looked  down  for  a 
moment  before  we  lost  sight  of  it  in  the  dis- 
order of  the  hills ;  it  may  be  that  we  have  lain 
awake  at  night,  and  agreeably  tantalised 
ourselves  with  the  thought  of  corners  we 
ii8 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

had  never  turned,  or  summits  we  had  all 
but  climbed:  we  shall  now  be  able,  as  we 
tell  ourselves,  to  complete  all  these  unfinish- 
ed pleasures,  and  pass  beyond  the  barriers 
that  confined  our  recolledions. 

The  promise  is  so  great,  and  we  are  all  so 
easily  led  away  when  hope  and  memory  are 
both  in  one  story,  that  I  daresay  the  sick 
man  is  not  very  inconsolable  when  he  re^< 
ceives  sentence  of  banishment,  and  is  in- 
cHned  to  regard  his  ill-health  as  not  the  least 
fortunate  accident  of  his  life.  Nor  is  he  im- 
mediately undeceived.  The  stir  and  speed 
of  the  journey,  and  the  restlessness  that 
goes  to  bed  with  him  as  he  tries  to  sleep 
between  two  days  of  noisy  progress,  fever 
him,  and  stimulate  his  dull  nerves  into  some- 
thing of  their  old  quickness  and  sensibility. 
And  so  he  can  enjoy  the  faint  autumnal 
splendour  of  the  landscape,  as  he  sees  hill 
and  plain,  vineyard  and  forest,  clad  in  one 
wonderful  glory  of  fairy  gold,  which  the 
first  great  winds  of  winter  will  transmute, 
as  in  the  fable,  into  withered  leaves.  And 
so  too  he  can  enjoy  the  admirable  brevity 
and  simplicity  of  such  little  glimpses  of 

119 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

country  and  country  ways  as  flash  upon  him 
through  the  windows  of  the  train;  little 
glimpses  that  have  a  charader  all  their  own ; 
sights  seen  as  a  travelling  swallow  might 
see  them  from  the  wing,  or  Iris  as  she  went 
abroad  over  the  land  on  some  Olympian 
errand.  Here  and  there,  indeed,  a  few  chil- 
dren huzzah  and  wave  their  hands  to  the 
express;  but  for  the  most  part,  it  is  an  in- 
terruption too  brief  and  isolated  to  attrad 
much  notice;  the  sheep  do  not  cease  from 
browsing;  a  girl  sits  balanced  on  the  pro- 
jeding  tiller  of  a  canal  boat,  so  precariously 
that  it  seems  as  if  a  fly  or  the  splash  of  a 
leaping  fish  would  be  enough  to  overthrow 
the  dainty  equilibrium,  and  yet  all  these 
hundreds  of  tons  of  coal  and  wood  and  iron 
have  been  precipitated  roaring  past  her  very 
ear,  and  there  is  not  a  start,  not  a  tremor, 
not  a  turn  of  the  averted  head,  to  indicate 
that  she  has  been  even  conscious  of  its 
passage.  Herein,  I  think,  lies  the  chief  at- 
traction of  railway  travel.  The  speed  is  so 
easy,  and  the  train  disturbs  so  little  the 
scenes  through  which  it  takes  us,  that  our 
heart  becomes  full  of  the  placidity  and  still- 

I20 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

ness  of  the  country;  and  while  the  body  is 
borne  forward  in  the  flying  chain  of  car- 
riages, the  thoughts  alight,  as  the  humour 
moves  them,  at  unfrequented  stations;  they 
make  haste  up  the  poplar  alley  that  leads 
toward  the  town;  they  are  left  behind  with 
the  signalman  as,  shading  his  eyes  with  his 
hand,  he  watches  the  long  train  sweep  away 
into  the  golden  distance. 

Moreover,  there  is  still  before  the  invalid 
the  shock  of  wonder  and  delight  with  which 
he  will  learn  that  he  has  passed  the  indefin- 
able line  that  separates  South  from  North. 
And  this  is  an  uncertain  moment;  for  some- 
times the  consciousness  is  forced  upon  him 
early,  on  the  occasion  of  some  sHght  asso- 
ciation, a  colour,  a  flower,  or  a  scent;  and 
sometimes  not  until,  one  fine  morning,  he 
wakes  up  with  the  southern  sunshine  peep- 
ing through  the  persiennes,  and  the  south- 
ern patois  confusedly  audible  belowthe  win- 
dows. Whether  it  come  early  or  late,  how- 
ever, this  pleasure  will  not  end  with  the 
anticipation,  as  do  so  many  others  of  the 
same  family.  It  will  leave  him  wider  awake 
than  it  found  him,  and  give  a  new  signifi- 


ORDERED  SO  UTH 

cance  to  all  he  may  see  for  many  days  to 
come.  There  is  something  in  the  mere  name 
of  the  South  that  carries  enthusiasm  along 
with  it.  At  the  sound  of  the  word,  he  pricks 
up  his  ears;hebecomesasanxioustoseekout 
beauties  and  to  get  by  heart  the  permanent 
lines  and  character  of  the  landscape,  as  if  he 
had  been  told  that  it  was  all  his  own  —  an 
estate  out  of  which  he  had  been  kept  un- 
justly, and  which  he  was  now  to  receive  in 
free  and  full  possession.  Even  those  who 
have  never  been  there  before  feel  as  if  they 
had  been;  and  everybody  goes  comparing, 
and  seeking  for  the  familiar,  and  finding  it 
with  such  ecstasies  of  recognition,  that  one 
would  think  they  were  coming  home  after 
a  weary  absence,  instead  of  travelling  hour- 
ly farther  abroad. 

It  is  only  after  he  is  fairly  arrived  and  set- 
tled down  in  his  chosen  corner^  that  the  in- 
valid begins  to  understand  the  change  that 
has  befallen  him.  Everything  about  him  is 
as  he  had  remembered,  or  as  he  had  antici- 
pated. Here,  at  his  feet,  under  his  eyes,  are 
the  olive  gardens  and  the  blue  sea.  Nothing 
can  change  the  eternal  magnificence  of  form 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

of  the  naked  Alps  behind  Mentone ;  nothing, 
not  even  the  crude  curves  of  the  railway, 
can  utterly  deform  the  suavity  of  contour  of 
one  bay  after  another  along  the  whole  reach 
of  the  Riviera.  And  of  all  this,  he  has  only  a 
cold  head  knowledge  that  is  divorced  from 
enjoyment.  He  recognises  with  his  intelli- 
gence that  this  thing  and  that  thing  is  beau- 
tiful, while  in  his  heart  of  hearts  he  has  to 
confess  that  it  is  not  beautiful  for  him.  It  is 
in  vain  that  he  spurs  his  discouraged  spirit; 
in  vain  that  he  chooses  out  points  of  view, 
and  stands  there,  looking  with  all  his  eyes, 
and  waiting  for  some  return  of  the  pleasure 
that  he  remembers  in  other  days,  as  the  sick 
folk  may  have  awaited  the  coming  of  the 
angel  at  the  pool  of  Bethesda.  He  is  like  an 
enthusiast  leading  about  with  him  a  stolid, 
indifferent  tourist. There  is  some  one  by  who 
is  out  of  sympathy  with  the  scene,  and  is 
not  moved  up  to  the  measure  of  the  occa- 
sion; and  that  some  one  is  himself  The 
world  is  disenchanted  for  him.  He  seems  to 
himself  to  touch  things  with  muffled  hands, 
and  to  see  them  through  a  veil.  His  life  be- 
comes a  palsied  fumbling  after  notes  that  are 

123 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

silent  when  he  has  found  and  struck  them. 
He  cannot  recognise  that  this  phlegmatic 
and  unimpressionable  body  with  which  he 
now  goes  burthened,  is  the  same  that  he 
knew  heretofore  so  quick  and  delicate  and 
alive. 

He  is  tempted  to  lay  the  blame  on  the  very 
softness  and  amenity  of  the  climate,  and  to 
fancy  that  in  the  rigours  of  the  winter  at 
home,  these  dead  emotions  would  revive 
and  flourish.  A  longing  for  the  brightness 
and  silence  of  fallen  snow  seizes  him  at  such 
times.  He  is  homesick  for  the  hale  rough 
weather;  for  the  tracery  of  the  frost  upon 
his  window-panes  at  morning,  the  reluftant 
descent  of  the  first  flakes,  and  the  white 
roofs  relieved  against  the  sombre  sky.  And 
yet  the  stuff  of  which  these  yearnings  are 
made  is  of  the  flimsiest;  if  but  the  ther- 
mometer fiill  a  little  below  its  ordinary  Med- 
iterranean level,  or  a  wind  come  down  from 
the  snow-clad  Alps  behind,  the  spirit  of  his 
fancies  changes  upon  the  instant,  and  many 
a  doleful  vignette  of  the  grim  wintry  streets 
at  home  returns  to  him,  and  begins  to  haunt 
his  memory.  The  hopeless,  huddled  attitude 
124 


ORDERED  SO  UTH 

of  tramps  in  doorways;  the  flinching  gait 
of  barefoot  children  on  the  icy  pavement; 
the  sheen  of  the  rainy  streets  towards  after- 
noon; the  meagre  anatomy  of  the  poor  de- 
fined by  the  clinging  of  wet  garments;  the 
high  canorous  note  of  the  North-easter  on 
days  when  the  very  houses  seem  to  stiffen 
with  cold:  these,  and  such  as  these,  crowd 
back  upon  him,  and  mockingly  substitute 
themselves  for  the  fanciful  winter  scenes 
with  which  he  had  pleased  himself  a  while 
before.  He  cannot  be  glad  enough  that  he  is 
where  he  is.  If  only  the  others  could  be  there 
also ;  if  only  those  tramps  could  lie  down  for 
a  little  in  the  sunshine,  and  those  children 
warm  their  feet,  this  once,  upon  a  kindHer 
earth ;  if  only  there  were  no  cold  anywhere, 
and  no  nakedness,  and  no  hunger;  if  only  it 
were  as  well  with  all  men  as  it  is  with  him ! 
For  it  is  not  altogether  ill  with  the  invalid, 
after  all.  If  it  is  only  rarely  that  anything 
penetrates  vividly  into  his  numbed  spirit, 
yet,  when  anything  does,  it  brings  with  it 
a  joy  that  is  all  the  more  poignant  for  its  very 
rarity.  There  is  something  pathetic  in  these 
occasional  returns  of  a  glad  adivity  of  heart. 

125 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

In  his  lowest  hours  he  will  be  stirred  and 
awakened  by  many  such;  and  they  will 
spring  perhaps  from  very  trivial  sources;  as 
a  friend  once  said  to  me,  the  **  spirit  of  de- 
light "  comes  often  on  small  wings.  For  the 
pleasure  that  we  take  in  beautiful  nature  is 
essentially  capricious.  It  comes  sometimes 
when  we  least  look  for  it;  and  sometimes, 
when  we  exped  it  most  certainly,  it  leaves 
us  to  gape  joyously  for  days  together,  in  the 
very  home-land  of  the  beautiful.  We  may 
have  passed  a  place  a  thousand  times  and 
one;  and  on  the  thousand  and  second  it  will 
be  transfigured,  and  stand  forth  in  a  certain 
splendour  of  reality  from  the  dull  circle  of 
surroundings;  so  that  we  see  it  ''with  a 
child's  first  pleasure,"  as  Wordsworth  saw 
the  daffodils  by  the  lake  side.  And  if  this 
falls  out  capriciously  with  the  healthy,  how 
much  more  so  with  the  invalid.  Some  day 
he  will  find  his  first  violet,  and  be  lost  in 
pleasant  wonder,  by  what  alchemy  the  cold 
earth  of  the  clods,  and  the  vapid  air  and 
rain,  can  be  transmuted  into  colour  so  rich 
and  odour  so  touchingly  sweet.  Or  perhaps 
he  may  see  a  group  of  washerwomen  re- 
126 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

lieved,  on  a  spit  of  shingle,  against  the  blue 
sea,  or  a  meeting  of  flower-gatherers  in  the 
tempered  daylight  of  an  olive-garden;  and 
something  significant  or  monumental  in  the 
grouping,  something  in  the  harmony  of  faint 
colour  that  is  always  characteristic  of  the 
dress  of  these  southern  women,  will  come 
home  to  him  unexpectedly,  and  awake  in 
him  that  satisfaction  with  which  we  tell 
ourselves  that  we  are  the  richer  by  one  more 
beautiful  experience.  Or  it  may  be  some- 
thing even  slighter:  as  when  the  opulence 
of  the  sunshine,  which  somehow  gets  lost 
and  fails  to  produce  its  effeCt  on  the  large 
scale,  is  suddenly  revealed  to  him  by  the 
chance  isolation  —  as  he  changes  the  posi- 
tion of  his  sunshade  —  of  a  yard  or  two  of 
»oadway  with  its  stones  and  weeds.  And 
then,  there  is  no  end  to  the  infinite  variety 
of  the   olive-yards  themselves.    Even    the 
colour  is  indeterminate  and  continually  shift- 
ing: now  you  would  say  it  was  green,  now 
gray,  now  blue ;  now  tree  stands  above  tree, 
like ''cloud  on  cloud,"  massed  into  filmy 
indistinctness;  and  now,  at  the  wind's  will, 
the  whole  sea  of  foliage  is  shaken  and  broken 

127 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

up  with  little  momentary  silveringsandshad- 
o ws.  But  everyone  sees  the  world  in  his  own 
way.  To  some  the  glad  moment  may  have 
arrived  on  other  provocations ;  and  their  rec- 
olledion  may  be  most  vivid  of  the  stately 
gait  of  women  carrying  burthens  on  their 
heads;  of  tropical  effeds,  with  canes  and 
naked  rock  and  sunhght;  of  the  relief  of  cy- 
presses ;  ofthetroubled,busy-lookinggroups 
of  sea-pines,  that  seem  always  as  if  they 
were  being  wielded  and  swept  together  by 
a  whirlwind;  of  the  air  coming,  laden  with 
virginal  perfumes,  over  the  myrtles  and  the 
scented  underwood;  of  the  empurpled  hills 
standing  up,  solemn  and  sharp,  out  of  the 
green-gold  air  of  the  east  at  evening. 

There  go  many  elements,  without  doubt, 
to  the  making  of  one  such  moment  of  in- 
tense perception;  and  it  is  on  the  happy 
agreement  of  these  many  elements,  on  the 
harmonious  vibration  of  many  nerves,  that 
the  whole  delight  of  the  moment  must  de- 
pend. Who  can  forget  how,  when  he  has 
chanced  upon  some  attitude  of  complete 
restfulness,  after  long  uneasy  rolling  to  and 
fro  on  grass  or  heather,  the  whole  fashion 
128 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

ofthelandscapehas  been  changed  for  him,  as 
though  the  sun  had  just  broken  forth,  or  a 
great  artist  had  only  then  completed,  by 
some  cunning  touch,  the  composition  of  the 
pidure  ?  And  not  only  a  change  of  posture — 
a  snatch  of  perfume,  the  sudden  smging  of 
a  bird,  the  freshness  of  some  pulse  of  air 
from  an  invisible  sea,  the  light  shadow  of  a 
travelling  cloud,  the  merest  nothing  that 
sends  a  little  shiver  along  the  most  infini- 
tesimal nerve  of  a  man's  body  —  not  one  of 
the  least  of  these  but  has  a  hand  somehow 
in  the  general  effect,  and  brings  some  re- 
finement of  its  own  into  the  charader  of  the 
pleasure  we  feel. 

And  if  the  external  conditions  are  thus 
varied  and  subtle,  even  more  so  are  those 
within  our  own  bodies.  No  man  can  find 
out  the  world,  says  Solomon,  from  begin- 
ning to  end,  because  the  world  is  in  his  heart ; 
and  so  it  is  impossible  for  any  of  us  to  un- 
derstand, from  beginning  to  end,  that  agree- 
ment of  harmonious  circumstances  that  cre- 
ates in  us  the  highest  pleasure  of  admiration, 
precisely  because  some  of  these  circum- 
stances are  hidden  from  us  for  ever  in  the 

129 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

constitution  of  our  own  bodies.  After  we 
have  reckoned  up  all  that  we  can  see  or  hear 
or  feel,  there  still  remains  to  be  taken  into 
account  some  sensibility  more  delicate  than 
usu^l  in  the  nerves  affeded,  or  some  ex- 
quisite refinement  in  the  architedure  of  the 
brain,  which  is  indeed  to  the  sense  of  the 
beautiful  as  the  eye  or  the  ear  to  the  sense 
of  hearing  or  sight.  We  admire  splendid 
views  and  great  pidures;  and  yet  what  is 
truly  admirable  is  rather  the  mind  within 
us,  that  gathers  together  these  scattered  de- 
tails for  its  delight,  and  makes  out  of  cer- 
tain colours,  certain  distributions  of  gradu- 
ated light  and  darkness^  that  intelligible 
whole  which  alone  we  call  a  pidure  or  a 
view.  Hazlitt,  relating  in  one  of  his  essays 
how  he  went  on  foot  from  one  great  man's 
house  to  another's  in  search  of  works  of 
art,  begins  suddenly  to  triumph  over  these 
noble  and  wealthy  owners,  because  he  was 
more  capable  of  enjoying  their  costly  pos- 
sessions than  they  were;  because  they  had 
paid  the  money  and  he  had  received  the 
pleasure.  And  the  occasion  is  a  fair  one  for  self- 
complacency.  While  the  one  man  was  work- 
130 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

ing  to  be  able  to  buy  the  pidure,  the  other 
was  working  to  be  able  to  enjoy  the  pic- 
ture. An  inherited  aptitude  will  have  been 
diligently  improved  in  either  case;  only  the 
one  man  has  made  for  himself  a  fortune,  and 
the  other  hasmadeforhimself  a  living  spirit. 
It  is  a  fair  occasion  for  self-complacency,  I 
repeat,  when  the  event  shows  a  man  to  have 
chosen  the  better  part,  and  laid  out  his  life 
more  wisely,  in  the  long  run,  than  those 
who  have  credit  for  most  wisdom.  And  yet 
even  this  is  not  a  good  unmixed;  and  like 
all  other  possessions,  although  in  a  less  de- 
gree, the  possession  of  a  brain  that  has  been 
thus  improved  and  cultivated,  and  made 
into  the  prime  organ  of  a  man's  enjoyment, 
brings  with  it  certain  inevitable  cares  and 
disappointments.  The  happiness  of  such  an 
one  comes  to  depend  greatly  upon  those 
fine  shades  of  sensation  that  heighten  and 
harmonise  the  coarser  elements  of  beauty. 
And  thus  a  degree  of  nervous  prostration, 
that  to  other  men  would  be  hardly  disagree^ 
able,  is  enough  to  overthrow  for  him  the 
whole  fabric  of  his  life,  to  take,  except  at  rare 
moments,  the  edge  off  his  pleasures,  and  to 

»3» 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

meet  him  wherever  he  goes  with  failure,  and 
the  sense  of  want,  and  disenchantment  of 
the  world  and  life. 

It  is  not  in  such  numbness  of  spirit  only 
that  the  life  of  the  invalid  resembles  a  pre- 
mature old  age.  Those  excursions  that  he 
had  promised  himself  to  finish,  prove  too 
long  or  too  arduous  for  his  feeble  body,  and 
the  barrier-hills  are  as  impassable  as  ever. 
Many  a  white  town  that  sits  far  out  on  the 
promontory,  many  a  comely  fold  of  wood 
on  the  mountain  side,  beckons  and  allures 
his  imagination  day  after  day,  and  is  yet  as 
inaccessible  to  his  feet  as  the  clefts  and 
gorges  of  the  clouds.  The  sense  of  distance 
grows  upon  him  wonderfully;  and  after 
some  feverish  efforts  and  the  fretful  uneasi- 
ness of  the  first  few  days,  he  falls  content- 
edly in  with  the  restridions  of  his  weakness. 
His  narrow  round  becomes  pleasant  and 
familiar  to  him  as  the  cell  to  a  contented 
prisoner.  Just  as  he  has  fallen  already  out  of 
the  mid  race  of  adive  life,  he  now  falls  out 
of  the  little  eddy  that  circulates  in  the  shal- 
low waters  of  the  sanatorium.  He  sees  the 
country  people  come  and  go  about  their 
132 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

everyday  affairs,  the  foreigners  stream  out 
in  goodly  pleasure  parties;  the  stir  of  man's 
adlivity  is  all  about  him,  as  he  suns  himself 
inertly  in  some  sheltered  corner;  and  he 
looks  on  with  a  patriarchal  impersonality  of 
interest,  such  as  a  man  may  feel  when  he 
pidlures  to  himself  the  fortunes  of  his  re- 
mote descendants,  or  the  robust  old  age  of 
the  oak  he  has  planted  over-night. 

In  this  falling  aside,  in  this  quietude  and 
desertion  of  other  men,  there  is  no  inhar- 
monious prelude  to  the  last  quietude  and 
desertion  of  the  grave;  in  this  dulness  of 
the  senses  there  is  a  gentle  preparation  for 
the  final  insensibility  of  death.  And  to  him 
the  idea  of  mortality  comes  in  a  shape  less 
violent  and  harsh  than  is  its  wont,  less  as 
an  abrupt  catastrophe  than  as  a  thing  of  in- 
finitesimal gradation,  and  the  last  step  on 
a  long  decline  of  way.  As  we  turn  to  and 
fro  in  bed,  and  every  moment  the  move- 
ments grow  feebler  and  smaller  and  the  at- 
titude more  restful  and  easy,  until  sleep 
overtakes  us  at  a  stride  and  we  move  no 
more,  so  desire  after  desire  leaves  him;  day 
by  day  his  strength  decreases,  and  the  circle 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

of  his  adivity  grows  ever  narrower;  and 
he  feels,  if  he  is  to  be  thus  tenderly  weaned 
from  the  passion  of  life,  thus  gradually  in- 
ducted into  the  slumber  of  death,  that  when 
at  last  the  end  comes,  it  will  come  quietly 
and  fitly.  If  anything  is  to  reconcile  poor 
spirits  to  the  coming  of  the  last  enemy, 
surely  it  should  be  such  a  mild  approach  as 
this;  not  to  hale  us  forth  with  violence,  but 
to  persuade  us  from  a  place  we  have  no  fur- 
ther pleasure  in.  It  is  not  so  much,  indeed, 
death  that  approaches  as  life  that  withdraws 
and  withers  up  from  round  about  him.  He 
has  outlived  his  own  usefulness,  and  almost 
his  own  enjoyment;  and  if  there  is  to  be  no 
recovery;  if  never  again  will  he  be  young 
and  strong  and  passionate,  if  the  adual  pres- 
ent shall  be  to  him  always  like  a  thing  read 
in  a  book  or  remembered  out  of  the  far- 
away past ;  if,  in  fad,  this  be  veritably  night- 
fall, he  will  not  wish  greatly  for  the  con- 
tinuance of  a  twilight  that  only  strains  and 
disappoints  the  eyes,  but  steadfastly  await 
the  perfed  darkness.  He  will  pray  for  Me- 
dea; when  she  comes,  let  her  either  rejuve- 
nate or  slay. 
«34 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

And  yet  the  ties  that  still  attach  him  to 
the  world  are  many  and  kindly.  The  sight 
of  children  has  a  significance  for  him  such 
as  it  may  have  for  the  aged  also,  but  not 
for  other*^.  If  he  has  been  used  to  feel  hu- 
manely, and  to  look  upon  life  somewhat 
more  widely  than  from  the  narrow  loophole 
of  personal  pleasure  and  advancement,  it  is 
strange  how  small  a  portion  of  his  thoughts 
will  be  changed  or  embittered  by  this  prox- 
imity of  death.  He  knows  that  already,  in 
cn^!:r^  counties,  the  sower  follows  the 
ploughman  up  the  face  of  the  field,  and  the 
rooks  follow  the  sower;  aud  he  knows  also 
that  he  may  not  live  to  go  home  again  an^ 
see  the  corn  spring  and  ripen,  and  be  cuc 
down  at  last,  and  brought  home  with  glad- 
ness. And  yet  the  future  of  this  harvest,  the 
continuance  of  drought  or  the  coming  of 
rain  unseasonably,  touch  him  as  sensibly  as 
ever.  For  he  has  long  been  used  to  wait  with 
interest  the  issue  of  events  in  which  his  own 
concern  was  nothing;  and  to  be  joyful  in  a 
plenty,  and  sorrowful  for  a  famine,  that  did 
not  increase  or  diminish,  by  one  half  loaf, 
the  equable  sufficiency  of  his  own  supply. 

»35 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

Thus  there  remain  unaltered  all  the  disin- 
terested hopes  for  mankind  and  a  better  future 
which  have  been  the  solace  and  inspiration 
of  his  life.  These  he  has  set  beyond  the  reach 
of  any  fate  that  only  menaces  himself;  and  it 
makes  small  difference  whether  he  die  five 
thousand  years,  or  five  thousand  and  fifty 
years,  before  the  good  epoch  for  which  he 
faithfully  labours.  He  has  not  deceived  him- 
self; he  has  known  from  the  beginning  that 
he  followed  the  pillar  of  fire  and  cloud,  only 
to  perish  himself  in  the  wilderness,  and  that 
it  was  reserved  for  others  to  enter  joyfully 
into  possession  of  the  land.  And  so,  as  every- 
thing grows  grayer  and  quieter  about  him, 
and  slopes  towards  extindion,  these  un- 
faded  visions  accompany  his  sad  decline, 
and  follow  him,  with  friendly  voices  and 
hopeful  words,  into  the  very  vestibule  of 
death.  The  desire  of  love  or  of  fame  scarce- 
ly moved  him,  in  his  days  of  health,  more 
strongly  than  these  generous  aspirations 
move  him  now;  and  so  life  is  carried  for- 
ward beyond  life,  and  a  vista  kept  open  for 
the  eyes  of  hope,  even  when  his  hands  grope 
already  on  the  face  of  the  impassable. 
136 


ORDERED  SO  UTH 

Lastly,  he  is  bound  tenderly  to  life  by  the 
thought  of  his  friends;  or,  shall  we  not  say 
rather,  that  by  their  thought  for  him,  by  their 
unchangeable  solicitude  and  love,he  remains 
woven  into  the  very  stuff  of  life,  beyond  the 
power  of  bodily  dissolution  to  undo  ?  In  a 
thousand  ways  will  he  survive  and  be  per- 
petuated. Much  of  Etienne  de  la  Boetie  sur- 
vived during  all  the  years  in  which  Mon- 
taigne continued  to  converse  with  him  on 
the  pages  of  the  ever-delightful  essays.  Much 
of  what  was  truly  Goethe  was  dead  already 
when  he  revisited  places  that  knew  him  no 
more,  and  found  no  better  consolation  than 
the  promise  of  his  own  verses,  that  soon  he 
too  would  be  at  rest.  Indeed,  when  we 
think  of  what  it  is  that  we  most  seek  and 
cherish,  and  find  most  pride  and  pleasure 
in  calling  ours,  it  will  sometimes  seem  to 
us  as  if  our  friends,  at  our  decease,  would 
suffer  loss  more  truly  than  ourselves.  As  a 
monarch  who  should  care  more  for  the  out- 
lying colonies  he  knows  on  the  map  or 
through  the  report  of  his  vicegerents,  than 
for  the  trunk  of  his  empire  under  his  eyes 
at  home,  are  we  not  more  concerned  about 

•37 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

the  shadowy  life  that  we  have  in  the  hearts 
of  others,  and  that  portion  in  their  thoughts 
and  fancies  which,  in  a  certain  far-away 
sense,  belongs  to  us,  than  about  the  real 
knot  of  our  identity  —  that  central  metrop- 
olis of  self,  of  which  alone  we  are  immedi- 
ately aware  —  or  the  diligent  service  of  ar- 
teries and  veins  and  infinitesimal  adivity 
of  ganglia,  which  we  know  (as  we  know 
a  proposition  in  Euclid)  to  be  the  source 
and  substance  of  the  whole  ?  At  the  death 
of  every  one  whom  we  love,  some  fair  and 
honourable  portion  of  our  existence  falls 
away,  and  we  are  dislodged  from  one  of 
these  dear  provinces;  and  they  are  not,  per- 
haps, the  most  fortunate  who  survive  a  long 
series  of  such  impoverishments,  till  their 
life  and  influence  narrow  gradually  into  the 
meagre  limit  of  their  own  spirits,  and  death, 
when  he  comes  at  last,  can  destroy  them 
at  one  blow. 

Note. — To  this  essay  I  must  in  honesty  append  a  word 
or  two  of  qualification;  for  this  is  one  of  the  points  on 
which  a  slightly  greater  age  teaches  us  a  slightly  differ- 
ent wisdom  : 

A  youth  delights  in  generalities,  and  keeps  loose  from 
138 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

particular  obligations;  he  jogs  on  the  footpath  way,  him- 
self pursuing  butterflies,  but  courteously  lending  his  ap- 
plause to  the  advance  of  the  human  species  and  the  com- 
ing of  the  kingdom  of  justice  and  love.  As  he  grows 
older,  he  begins  to  think  more  narrowly  of  man's  adion 
in  the  general,  and  perhaps  more  arrogantly  of  his  own  in 
the  particular.  He  has  not  that  same  unspeakable  trust  in 
what  he  would  have  done  had  he  been  spared,  seeing 
finally  that  that  would  have  been  little;  but  he  has  a  far 
higher  notion  of  the  blank  that  he  will  make  by  dying. 
A  young  man  feels  himself  one  too  many  in  the  world; 
his  is  a  painful  situation:  he  has  no  calling;  no  obvious 
utility;  no  ties,  but  to  his  parents,  and  these  he  is  sure 
to  disregard.  I  do  not  think  that  a  proper  allowance  has 
been  made  for  this  true  cause  of  suffering  in  youth;  but 
by  the  mere  fad  of  a  prolonged  existence,  we  outgrow 
either  the  fad  or  else  the  feeling.  Either  we  become  so 
callously  accustomed  to  our  own  useless  figure  in  the 
world,  or  else  —  and  this,  thank  God,  in  the  majority  of 
cases —  we  so  colled  about  us  the  interest  or  the  love  of 
our  fellows,  so  multiply  our  effedive  part  in  the  affairs 
of  life,  that  we  need  to  entertain  no  longer  the  question 
of  our  right  to  be. 

And  so  in  the  majority  of  cases,  a  man  who  fancies 
himself  dying,  will  get  cold  comfort  from  the  very  youth- 
ful view  expressed  in  this  essay.  He,  as  a  living  man,  has 
some  to  help,  some  to  love,  some  to  corred;  it  maybe, 
some  to  punish.  These  duties  cling,  not  upon  humanity, 
but  upon  the  man  himself  It  is  he,  not  another,  who  is 
one  woman's  son  and  a  second  woman's  husband  and  a 
third  woman's  father.  That  life  which  began  so  small,  has 

139 


ORDERED  SOUTH 

now  grown,  with  a  myriad  filaments,  into  the  lives  o1 
others.  It  is  not  indispensable;  another  will  take  the  place 
and  shoulder  the  discharged  responsibility;  but  the  bet- 
ter the  man  and  the  nobler  his  purposes,  the  more  will 
he  be  tempted  to  regret  the  extindion  of  his  powers  and 
the  deletion  of  his  personality.  To  have  lived  a  genera- 
tion, is  not  only  to  have  grown  at  home  in  that  perplex- 
ing medium,  but  to  have  assumed  innumerable  duties. 
To  die  at  such  an  age,  has,  for  all  but  the  entirely  base, 
something  of  the  air  of  a  betrayal.  A  man  does  not  only 
refled  upon  what  he  might  have  done  in  a  future  that  is 
never  to  be  his;  but  beholding  himself  so  early  a  deserter 
from  the  fight,  he  eats  his  heart  for  the  good  he  might 
have  done  already.  To  have  been  so  useless  and  now  to 
lose  all  hope  of  being  useful  any  more  —  there  it  is  that 
death  and  memory  assail  him.  And  even  if  mankind  shall 
go  on,  founding  heroic  cities,  pradising  heroic  virtues, 
rising  steadily  from  strength  to  strength ;  even  if  his  work 
shall  be  fulfilled,  his  friends  consoled,  his  wife  remarried 
by  a  better  than  he;  how  shall  this  alter,  in  one  jot,  his 
estimation  of  a  career  which  was  his  only  business  in  this 
worid,  which  was  so  fitfully  pursued,  and  which  is  now 
so  ineffedively  to  end  ? 


140 


^S  TRIPLEX 

'HE  changes  wrought  by  death  are 
in  themselves  so  sharp  and  final,  and 
so  terrible  and  melancholy  in  their 
consequences,  that  the  thing  stands  alone  in 
man's  experience,  and  has  no  parallel  upon 
earth.  It  outdoes  all  other  accidents  because 
it  is  the  last  of  them.  Sometimes  it  leaps  sud- 
denly upon  its  victims,  like  a  Thug;  some- 
times it  lays  a  regular  siege  and  creeps  upon 
their  citadel  during  a  score  of  years.  And 
when  the  business  is  done,  there  is  sore 
havoc  made  in  other  people's  lives,  and  a 
pin  knocked  out  by  which  many  subsidiary 
friendships  hung  together.  There  are  empty 
chairs,  solitary  walks,  and  single  beds  at 
night.  Again,  in  taking  away  our  friends, 
death  does  not  take  them  away  utterly,  but 
leaves  behind  a  mocking,  tragical,  and  soon 
intolerable  residue,  which  must  be  hurriedly 
concealed.  Hence  a  whole  chapter  of  sights 
and  customs  striking  to  the  mind,  from  the 

141 


yES  TRIPLEX 

pyramids  of  Egypt  to  the  gibbets  and  dule 
trees  of  mediaeval  Europe.  The  poorest  per- 
sons have  a  bit  of  pageant  going  towards  the 
tomb;  memorial  stones  are  set  up  over  the 
least  memorable;  and,  in  order  to  preserve 
some  show  of  resped  for  what  remains  of 
our  old  loves  and  friendships,  we  must  ac- 
company it  with  much  grimly  ludicrous  cere- 
monial, and  the  hired  undertaker  parades 
before  the  door.  All  this,  and  much  more  of 
the  same  sort,  accompanied  by  the  eloquence 
of  poets,  has  gone  a  great  way  to  put  hu- 
manity in  error;  nay,  in  many  philosophies 
the  error  has  been  embodied  and  laid  down 
with  every  circumstance  of  logic;  although 
in  real  life  the  bustle  and  swiftness,  in  leaving 
people  little  time  to  think,  have  not  left  them 
time  enough  to  go  dangerously  wrong  in 
practice. 

As  a  matter  of  fad,  although  few  things 
are  spoken  of  with  more  fearful  whisperings 
than  this  prospeA  of  death,  few  have  less  in- 
fluence on  condud  under  healthy  circum- 
stances. We  have  all  heard  of  cities  in  South 
America  built  upon  the  side  of  fiery  moun- 
tains, and  how,  even  in  this  tremendous 
142 


^S  TRIPLEX 

neighbourhood,  the  inhabitants  are  not  a  jot 
more  impressed  by  the  solemnity  of  mortal 
conditions  than  if  they  were  delving  gardens 
in  the  greenest  corner  of  England.  There  are 
serenades  and  suppers  and  much  gallantry 
among  the  myrtles  overhead;  and  mean- 
while the  foundation  shudders  underfoot, 
the  bowels  of  the  mountain  growl,  and  at 
any  moment  hving  ruin  may  leap  sky-high 
into  the  moonlight,  and  tumble  man  and  his 
merry-making  in  the  dust.  In  the  eyes  of 
very  young  people,  and  very  dull  old  ones, 
there  is  something  indescribably  reckless 
and  desperate  in  such  a  pidure.  It  seems 
not  credible  that  respeAable  married  people, 
with  umbrellas,  should  find  appetite  for  a  bit 
of  supper  within  quite  a  long  distance  of  a 
fiery  mountain ;  ordinary  life  begins  to  smell 
of  high-handed  debauch  when  it  is  carried 
onso  close  to  a  catastrophe ;  and  even  cheese 
and  salad,  it  seems,  could  hardly  be  relished 
in  such  circumstances  without  something 
like  a  defiance  of  the  Creator.  It  should  be  a 
place  for  nobody  but  hermits  dwelling  in 
prayer  and  maceration,  or  mere  born-devils 
drowning  care  in  a  perpetual  carouse. 

«43 


^S  TRIPLEX 

And  yet,  when  one  comes  to  think  upon  it 
calmly,  the  situation  of  theseSouth  American 
citizens  forms  only  a  very  pale  figure  for  the 
state  of  ordinary  mankind.  This  world  itself, 
travelling  blindly  and  swiftly  in  over  crowd- 
ed space,  among  a  million  other  worlds  trav- 
elling blindly  and  swiftly  in  contrary  direc- 
tions, may  very  well  come  by  a  knock  that 
would  setit  into  explosion  like  a  penny  squib. 
And  what,  pathologically  looked  at,  is  the 
human  body  with  all  its  organs,  but  a  mere 
bagful  of  petards  }  The  least  of  these  is  as 
dangerous  to  the  whole  economy  as  the 
ship's  powder-magazine  to  the  ship;  and 
with  every  breath  we  breathe,  and  every 
meal  we  eat,  we  are  putting  one  or  more  of 
them  in  peril.  If  we  clung  as  devotedly  as 
some  philosophers  pretend  we  do  to  the  ab- 
stract idea  of  life,  or  were  half  as  frightened 
as  they  make  out  we  are,  for  the  subversive 
accident  that  ends  it  all,  the  trumpets  might 
sound  by  the  hour  and  no  one  would  follow 
them  into  battle  —  the  blue-peter  might  fly 
at  the  truck,  but  who  would  climb  into  a 
sea-going  ship?  Think  (if  these  philosophers 
were  right)  with  what  a  preparation  of  spirit 
144 


^S  TRIPLEX 

we  should  affront  the  daily  peril  of  the  din- 
ner-table: a  deadlier  spot  than  any  battle- 
field in  history,  where  the  for  greater  propor- 
tion of  our  ancestors  have  miserably  left  their 
bones!  What  woman  would  ever  be  lured 
into  marriage,  so  much  more  dangerous  than 
the  wildest  sea?  And  what  woulditbeto  grow 
old?  For,  after  a  certain  distance,  every  step 
we  take  in  life  we  find  the  ice  growing  thin- 
ner below  our  feet,  and  all  around  us  and 
behind  us  we  see  our  contemporaries  going 
through.  By  the  time  a  man  gets  well  into 
the  seventies,  his  continued  existence  is  a 
mere  miracle ;  and  when  he  lays  his  old  bones 
in  bed  for  the  night,  there  is  an  overwhelm- 
ing probability  that  he  will  neverseethe  day. 
Do  the  old  men  mind  it,  as  a  matter  of  fad? 
Why,  no.  They  were  never  merrier;  they 
have  their  grog  at  night,  and  tell  the  raciest 
stories;  they  hear  of  the  death  of  people 
about  their  own  age,  or  even  younger,  not 
as  if  it  was  a  grisly  warning,  but  with  a 
simple  childlike  pleasure  at  having  outlived 
some  one  else;  and  when  a  draught  might 
puff  them  out  like  a  guttering  candle,  or  a 
bit  of  a  stumble  shatter  them  like  so  much 

145 


^S  TRIPLEX 

glass,  their  old  hearts  keep  sound  and  un- 
affrighted,  and  they  go  on,  bubbling  with 
laughter,  through  years  of  man's  age  com- 
pared to  which  the  valley  at  Balaklava  was 
as  safe  and  peaceful  as  a  village  cricket-green 
on  Sunday.  It  may  fairly  be  questioned  (if 
we  look  to  the  peril  only)  whether  it  was  a 
much  more  daring  feat  forCurtius  to  plunge 
into  the  gulf,  than  for  any  old  gentleman  of 
ninety  to  doff  his  clothes  and  clamber  into 
bed. 

Indeed,  it  is  a  memorable  subjecfl  for  con- 
sideration, with  what  unconcern  and  gaiety 
mankind  pricks  on  along  the  Valley  of  the 
Shadow  of  Death.  The  whole  way  is  one 
wilderness  of  snares,  and  the  end  of  it,  for 
those  who  fear  the  last  pinch,  is  irrevocable 
ruin.  And  yet  we  go  spinning  through  it  all, 
like  a  party  for  the  Derby.  Perhaps  the  reader 
remembers  one  of  the  humorous  devices  of 
the  deified  Caligula:  how  he  encouraged  a 
vast  concourse  of  holiday-makers  on  to  his 
bridge  over  Baiae  bay;  and  when  they  were 
in  the  height  of  their  enjoyment,  turned 
loose  the  Praetorian  guards  among  the  com- 
pany, and  had  them  tossed  into  the  sea, 
146 


^S  TRIPLEX 

This  is  no  bad  miniature  of  the  dealings  of 
nature  with  the  transitory  race  of  mai\  Only, 
what  a  chequered  picnic  we  have  cnt,  even 
while  it  lasts!  and  into  what  gr<;:tt  waters, 
not  to  be  crossed  by  any  s'^'lmmer,  God's 
pale  Praetorian  throws  u*:  over  in  the  end! 
We  live  the  time  that  a  match  flickers; 
we  pop  the  cork  of  a  ginger-beer  bottle,  and 
the  earthquake  swallov/s  us  on  the  instant. 
Is  it  not  odd,  is  it  not  incongruous,  is  it  not, 
in  the  highest  sense  of  human  speech,  in- 
credible, that  we  should  think  so  highly  of 
the  ginger-beer,  and  regard  so  little  the  de- 
vouring earthquake?  The  love  of  Life  and  the 
fear  of  Death  are  two  famous  phrases  that 
grow  harder  to  understand  the  more  we 
think  about  them.  It  is  a  well-known  fad 
that  an  immense  proportion  of  boat  acci- 
dents would  never  happen  if  people  held  the 
sheet  in  their  hands  instead  of  making  it 
fast;  and  yet,  unless  it  be  some  martinet  of 
a  professional  mariner  or  some  landsman 
with  shattered  nerves,  every  one  of  God's 
creatures  makes  it  fast.  A  strange  instance 
of  man's  unconcern  and  brazen  boldness  in 
the  face  of  death ! 

147 


^S  TRIPLEX 

We  confound  ourselves  with  metaphysi- 
cal phrases,  which  we  import  into  daily  talk 
with  noble  inappropriateness.  We  have  no 
idea  of  what  death  is,  apart  from  its  circum- 
stances and  some  of  its  consequences  to 
others;  and  although  we  have  some  experi- 
ence of  living,  there  is  not  a  man  on  earth 
who  has  flown  so  high  into  abstraction  as 
to  have  any  praftical  guess  at  the  meaning 
of  the  word  life.  All  literature,  from  Job  and 
Omar  Khayam  to  Thomas  Carlyle  or  Walt 
Whitman,  is  but  an  attempt  to  look  upon 
the  human  state  with  such  largeness  of  view 
as  shall  enable  us  to  rise  from  the  considera- 
tion of  living  to  the  Definition  of  Life.  And 
our  sages  give  us  about  the  best  satisfadion 
in  their  power  when  they  say  that  it  is  a 
vapour,  or  a  show,  or  made  out  of  the  same 
stuff  with  dreams.  Philosophy,  in  its  more 
rigid  sense,  has  been  at  the  same  work  for 
ages;  and  after  a  myriad  bald  heads  have 
wagged  over  the  problem,  and  piles  of 
words  have  been  heaped  one  upon  another 
into  dry  and  cloudy  volumes  without  end, 
philosophy  has  the  honour  of  laying  before 
us,  with  modest  pride,  her  contribution  to 
148 


yES  TRIPLEX 

wards  the  subject:  that  life  is  a  Permanent 
Possibility  of  Sensation.  Truly  a  fine  result! 
A  man  may  very  well  love  beef,  or  hunting, 
or  a  woman;  but  surely,  surely,  not  a  Per- 
manent Possibility  of  Sensation!  He  may  be 
afraid  of  a  precipice,  or  a  dentist,  or  a  large 
enemy  with  a  club,  or  even  an  undertaker's 
man;  but  not  certainly  of  abstrad  death. 
We  may  trick  with  the  word  life  in  its  dozen 
senses  until  we  are  weary  of  tricking;  we 
may  argue  in  terms  of  all  the  philosophies 
on  earth,  but  one  fad  remains  true  through- 
out—  that  we  do  not  love  life,  in  the  sense 
that  we  are  greatly  preoccupied  about  its 
conservation;  that  we  do  not,  properly 
speaking,  love  life  at  all,  but  living.  Into  the 
views  of  the  least  careful  there  will  enter 
some  degree  of  providence;  no  man's  eyes 
are  fixed  entirely  on  the  passing  hour;  but 
although  we  have  some  anticipation  of  good 
health,  good  weather,  wine,  adive  employ- 
ment, love,  and  self-approval,  the  sum  of 
these  anticipations  does  not  amount  to  any- 
thing like  a  general  view  of  life's  possibili- 
ties and  issues;  nor  are  those  who  cherish 
them  most  vividly,  at  all  the  most  scrupu- 

149 


y^S  TRIPLEX 

lous  of  their  personal  safety.  To  be  deeply 
interested  in  the  accidents  of  our  existence, 
to  enjoy  keenly  the  mixed  texture  of  human 
experience,  rather  leads  a  man  to  disregard 
precautions,  and  risk  his  neck  against  a 
straw.  For  surely  the  love  of  living  is 
stronger  in  an  Alpine  climber  roping  over  a 
peril,  or  a  hunter  riding  merrily  at  a  stiff 
fence,  than  in  a  creature  who  hves  upon  a 
diet  and  walks  a  measured  distance  in  the 
interest  of  his  constitution. 

There  is  a  great  deal  of  very  vile  nonsense 
talked  upon  both  sides  of  the  matter:  tear- 
ing divines  reducing  life  to  the  dimensions 
of  a  mere  funeral  procession,  so  short  as  to 
be  hardly  decent;  and  melancholy  unbe- 
lievers yearning  for  the  tomb  as  if  it  were 
a  world  too  far  away.  Both  sides  must  feel 
a  little  ashamed  of  their  performances  now 
and  again  when  they  draw  in  their  chairs  to 
dinner.  Indeed,  a  good  meal  and  a  bottle  of 
wine  is  an  answer  to  most  standard  works 
upon  the  question.  When  a  man's  heart 
warms  to  his  viands,  he  forgets  a  great  deal 
of  sophistry,  and  soars  into  a  rosy  zone  of 
contemplation.  Death  may  be  knocking  at 
150 


^S  TRIPLEX 

the  door,  like  the  Commander's  statue;  we 
have  something  else  in  hand,  thank  God,  and 
let  him  knock.  Passing  bells  are  ringing  all 
the  world  over.  All  the  world  over,  and 
every  hour,  some  one  is  parting  company 
with  all  his  aches  and  ecstasies.  For  us  also 
the  trap  is  laid.  But  we  are  so  fond  of  life 
that  we  have  no  leisure  to  entertain  the  ter- 
ror of  death.  It  is  a  honeymoon  with  us  all 
through,  and  none  of  the  longest.  Small 
blame  to  us  if  we  give  our  whole  hearts  to 
this  glowing  bride  of  ours,  to  the  appetites, 
to  honour,  to  the  hungry  curiosity  of  the 
mind,  to  the  pleasure  of  the  eyes  in  nature, 
and  the  pride  of  our  own  nimble  bodies. 

We  all  of  us  appreciate  the  sensations; 
but  as  for  caring  about  the  Permanence  of 
the  Possibility,  a  man's  head  is  generally 
very  bald,  and  his  senses  very  dull,  before 
he  comes  to  that.  Whether  we  regard  life 
as  a  lane  leading  to  a  dead  wall  —  a  mere 
bag's  end,  as  the  French  say  —  or  whether 
we  think  of  it  as  a  vestibule  or  gymnasium, 
where  we  wait  our  turn  and  prepare  our  fac- 
ulties for  some  more  noble  destiny;  whether 
we  thunder  in  a  pulpit,  or  pule  in  little  athe- 

151 


^S  TRIPLEX 

istic  poetry-books,  about  its  vanity  and  brev- 
ity; whetherwe  look  justlyforyears  of  health 
and  vigour,  or  are  about  to  mount  into  a  bath- 
chair,  as  a  step  towards  the  hearse;  in  each 
and  all  of  these  views  and  situations  there 
is  but  one  conclusion  possible:  thatC^  man 
should  stop  his  ears  against  paralysing  ter- 
ror, and  run  the  race  that  is  set  before  him 
with  a  single  mind'^No  one  surely  could  have 
recoiled  with  more  heartache  and  terror  from 
the  thought  of  death  than  our  respe(5led  lex- 
icographer; and  yet  we  know  how  httle  it 
affed;ed  his  conduct,  how  wisely  and  boldly 
he  walked,  and  in  what  a  fresh  and  lively  vein 
he  spoke  of  life.  Already  an  old  man,  he  ven- 
tured on  his  Highland  tour;  and  his  heart, 
bound  with  triple  brass,  did  not  recoil  before 
twenty-seven  individual  cups  of  tea.  As 
courage  and  intelligence  are  the  two  qualities 
best  worth  a  good  man's  cultivation,  so  it  is 
the  first  part  of  intelligence  to  recognise  our 
precarious  estate  in  life,  and  the  first  part  of 
courage  to  be  not  at  all  abashed  before  the 
fad.  A  frank  and  somewhat  headlong  car- 
riage, not  looking  too  anxiously  before,  not 
dallying  in  maudlin  regret  over  the  past, 
152 


^S  TRIPLEX 
stamps  the  man  who  is  well  armoured  for 
this  world. 

And  not  only  well  armoured  for  himself, 
but  a  good  friend  and  a  good  citizen  to 
boot.  We  do  not  go  to  cowards  for  tender 
dealing;  there  is  nothing  so  cruel  as  panic; 
the  man  who  has  least  fear  for  his  own  car- 
case, has  most  time  to  consider  others. 
That  eminent  chemist  who  took  his  walks 
abroad  in  tin  shoes,  and  subsisted  wholly 
upon  tepid  milk,  had  all  his  work  cut  out  for 
him  in  considerate  dealings  with  his  own  di- 
gestion. So  soon  as  prudence  has  begun  to 
grow  up  in  the  brain,  like  a  dismal  fungus, 
it  finds  its  first  expression  in  a  paralysis  of 
generous  ads.  The  vidim  begins  to  shrink 
spiritually;  he  develops  a  fancy  for  parlours 
with  a  regulated  temperature,  and  takes 
his  morality  on  the  principle  of  tin  shoes 
and  tepid  milk.  The  care  of  one  important 
body  or  soul  becomes  so  engrossing,  that 
all  the  noises  of  the  outer  world  begin  to 
come  thin  and  faint  into  the  parlour  with 
the  regulated  temperature ;  and  the  tin  shoes 
go  equably  forward  over  blood  and  rain.  To 
be  overwise  is  to  ossify;  and  the  scruple- 

•53 


^S  TRIPLEX 

monger  ends  by  standing  stockstill.  'No'yj^ 
the  man  who  has  his  heart  on  his  sleeve,  and 
a  good  whirling  weathercock  of  a  brain, 
who  reckons  his  life  as  a  thing  to  be  dash- 
ingly used  and  cheerfully  hazarded,  makes 
a  very  different  acquaintance  of  the  world, 
keeps  all  his  pulses  going  true  and  fast,  and 
gathers  impetus  as  he  runs,  until,  if  he  be  run- 
ning towards  anything  better  than  wildfire, 
he  may  shoot  up  and  become  a  constellation 
in  the  end.  Lord  look  after  his  health.  Lord 
have  a  care  of  his  soul,  says  he;  and  he  has 
at  the  key  of  the  position,  and  swashes 
through  incongruity  and  peril  towards  his 
aim.  Death  is  on  all  sides  of  him  with  point- 
ed batteries,  as  he  is  on  all  sides  of  all  of  us ; 
unfortunate  surprises  gird  him  round;  mim- 
mouthed  friends  and  relations  hold  up  their 
hands  in  quite  a  little  elegiacal  synod  about 
his  path :  and  what  cares  he  for  all  this  ?  Be- 
ing a  true  lover  of  living,  a  fellow  with 
something  pushing  and  spontaneous  in  his 
inside,  he  must,  like  any  other  soldier,  in 
any  other  stirring,  deadly  warfare,  push  on 
at  his  best  pace  until  he  touch  the  goal.  "  A 
peerage  or  Westminster  Abbey!"  cried  Nel- 

I '54 


^S  TRIPLEX 

son  in  his  bright,  boyish,  heroic  manner. 
These  are  great  incentives;  not  for  any  of 
these,  but  for  the  plain  satisfaction  of  living, 
of  being  about  their  business  in  some  sort 
or  other,  do  the  brave,  serviceable  men  of 
every  nation  tread  down  the  nettle  danger, 
and  pass  flyingly  over  all  the  stumbling- 
blocks  of  prudence.  Think  of  the  heroism  of 
Johnson,  think  of  that  superb  indifference 
to  mortal  limitation  that  set  him  upon  his 
dictionary,  and  carried  him  through  tri- 
umphantly until  the  end!  Who,  if  he  were 
wisely  considerate  of  things  at  large,  would 
ever  embark  upon  any  work  much  more 
considerable  than  a  halfpenny  post  card? 
Who  would  project  a  serial  novel,  after 
Thackeray  and  Dickens  had  each  fallen  in 
mid-course  ?  Who  would  fmd  heart  enough 
to  begin  to  Hve,  if  he  daUied  with  the  con- 
sideration of  death  ? 

And,  after  all,  what  sorry  and  pitiful  quib- 
bling all  this  is!  To  forego  all  the  issues  of 
living  in  a  parlour  with  a  regulated  tempera- 
ture—  as  if  that  were  not  to  die  a  hundred 
times  over,  and  for  ten  years  at  a  stretch! 
As  if  it  were  not  to  die  in  one's  own  life- 

»55 


^S  TRIPLEX 

time,  and  without  even  the  sad  immunities 
of  death !  As  if  it  were  not  to  die,  and  yet  be 
the  patient  spectators  of  our  own  pitiable 
change!  The  Permanent  Possibility  is  pre- 
served, but  the  sensations  carefully  held  at 
arm's  length,  as  if  one  kept  a  photographic 
plate  in  a  dark  chamber/ It  is  better  to  lose 
health  like  a  spendthrift  than  to  waste  it 
like  a  miser.  It  is  better  to  live  and  be  done 
with  it,  than  to  die  daily  in  the  sickroom. 
By  all  means  begin  your  folio;  even  if  the 
dodor  does  not  give  you  a  year,  even  if  he 
hesitates  about  a  month,  make  one  brave 
push  and  see  what  can  be  accomplished  in 
a  week.  It  is  not  only  in  finished  undertak- 
ings that  we  ought  to  honour  useful  labour. 
A  spirit  goes  out  of  the  man  who  means 
execution,  which  outlives  the  most  untimely 
ending.  (AH  who  have  meant  good  work 
with  their  whole  hearts,  have  done  good 
work,  although  they  may  die  before  they 
have  the  time  to  sign  it^^  Every  heart  that 
has  beat  strong  and  cheerfully  has  left  a 
hopeful  impulse  behind  it  in  the  world,  and 
bettered  the  tradition  of  mankind.  And  even 
if  death  catch  people,  like  an  open  pitfall,  and 
156 


y^S  TRIPLEX 

in  mid-career,  laying  out  vast  projefls,  and 
planning  monstrous  foundations,  flushed 
with  hope,  and  their  mouths  full  of  boast- 
ful language,  they  should  be  at  once  tripped 
up  and  silenced:  is  there  not  something 
brave  and  spirited  in  such  a  termination? 
and  does  not  life  go  down  with  a  better 
grace,  foaming  in  full  body  over  a  precipice, 
than  miserably  straggHng  to  an  end  in  sandy 
deltas?  When  the  Greeks  made  their  fine 
saying  that  those  whom  the  gods  love  die 
young,  I  cannot  help  believing  they  had  this 
sort  of  death  also  in  their  eye.vFor  surely,  at 
whatever  age  it  overtake  the  man,  this  is  to 
di^3^oung>  Death  has  not  been  suffered  to 
take  so  much  as  an  illusion  from  his  heart. 
In  the  hot-fit  of  life,  a-tiptoe  on  the  highest 
point  of  being,  he  passes  at  a  bound  on  to 
the  other  side.  The  noise  of  the  mallet  and 
chisel  is  scarcely  quenched,  the  trumpets 
are  hardly  done  blowing,  when,  trailing 
with  him  clouds  of  glory,  this  happy-starred, 
full-blooded  spirit  shoots  into  the  spiritual 
land. 


157 


EL  DORADO 

[T  seems  as  if  a  great  deal  were  at- 
tainable in  a  world  where  there  are 
so  many  marriages  and  decisive  bat- 
tles, and  where  we  all,  at  certain  hours  of 
the  day,  and  with  great  gusto  and  despatch, 
stow  a  portion  of  viduals  finally  and  irre- 
trievably into  the  bag  which  contains  us. 
And  it  would  seem  also,  on  a  hasty  view, 
that  the  attainment  of  as  much  as  possible 
was  the  one  goal  of  man's  contentious  life. 
And  yet,  as  regards  the  spirit,  this  is  but  a 
semblance.  We  live  in  an  ascending  scale 
when  we  live  happily,  one  thing  leading  to 
another  in  an  endless  series.  There  is  always 
a  new  horizon  for  onward-looking  men,  and 
although  we  dwell  on  a  small  planet,  im- 
mersed in  petty  business  and  not  enduring 
beyond  a  brief  period  of  years,  we  are  so  con- 
stituted that  our  hopes  are  inaccessible,  like 
stars,  and  the  term  of  hoping  is  prolonged 
until  the  term  of  life.  To  be  truly  happy  is  a 
158 


EL  DORADO 

question  of  how  we  begin  and  not  of  how 
we  end,  of  what  we  want  and  not  of  what 
we  have.  An  aspiration  is  a  joy  for  ever,  a 
possession  as  solid  as  a  landed  estate,  a  for- 
tune which  we  can  never  exhaust  and 
which  gives  us  year  by  year  a  revenue  of 
pleasurable  adivity.  To  have  many  of  these 
is  to  be  spiritually  rich.  Life  is  only  a  very 
dull  and  ill-direded  theatre  unless  we  have 
some  interests  in  the  piece;,  and  to  those 
who  have  neither  art  nor  science,  the  world 
is  a  mere  arrangement  of  colours,  or  a  rough 
footway  where  they  may  very  well  break 
their  shins.  It  is  in  virtue  of  his  own  desires 
and  curiosities  that  any  man  continues  to 
exist  with  even  patience,  that  he  is  charmed 
by  the  look  of  things  and  people,  and  that 
he  wakens  every  morning  with  a  renewed 
appetite  for  work  and  pleasure.  Desire  and 
curiosity  are  the  two  eyes  through  which 
he  sees  the  world  in  the  most  enchanted 
colours:  it  is  they  that  make  women  beau- 
tiful or  fossils  interesting:  and  the  man  may 
squander  his  estate  and  come  to  beggary, 
but  if  he  keeps  these  two  amulets  he  is  still 
rich  in  the  possibilities  of  pleasure.  Suppose 

^59 


EL  DORADO 

he  could  take  one  meal  so  compafl  and 
comprehensive  thathe  should  never  hunger 
any  more;  suppose  him,  at  a  glance,  to 
take  in  all  the  features  of  the  world  and  allay 
the  desire  for  knowledge;  suppose  him  to 
do  the  like  in  any  province  of  experience  — 
would  not  that  man  be  in  a  poor  way  for 
amusement  ever  after? 

One  who  goes  touring  on  foot  with  a 
single  volume  in  his  knapsack  reads  with 
circumspection,  pausing  often  to  reflecl:,  and 
often  laying  the  book  down  to  contemplate 
the  landscape  or  the  prints  in  the  inn  parlour; 
for  he  fears  to  come  to  an  end  of  his  enter- 
tainment, and  he  left  companionless  on  the 
last  stages  of  his  journey.  A  young  fellow 
recently  finished  the  works  of  Thomas  Car- 
lyle,  winding  up,  if  we  remember  aright, 
with  the  ten  note-books  upon  Frederick  the 
Great.  "What!"  cried  the  young  fellow,  in 
consternation,  "is  there  no  more  Carlyle? 
Am  I  left  to  the  daily  papers.?"  A  more  cele- 
brated instance  is  that  of  Alexander,  who 
wept  bitterly  because  he  had  no  more  worlds 
to  subdue.  And  when  Gibbon  had  finished 
the  Decline  and  Fall,  he  had  only  a  few 
160 


EL  DORADO 

moments  of  joy;  and  it  was  with  a  "sober 
melancholy  "  that  he  parted  from  his  labours. 
Happily  we  all  shoot  at  the  moon  with 
ineffedual  arrows  ;  our  hopes  are  set  on  in- 
accessible El  Dorado ;  we  come  to  an  end 
of  nothing  here  below.  Interests  are  only 
plucked  up  to  sow  themselves  again,  like 
mustard.  You  would  think,  when  the  child 
was  born,  there  would  be  an  end  to  trouble; 
and  yet  it  is  only  the  beginning  of  fresh 
anxieties ;  and  when  you  haveseen  it  through 
its  teething  and  its  education,  and  at  last  its 
marriage,  alas!  it  is  only  to  have  new  fears, 
new  quivering  sensibilities,  with  every  day; 
and  the  health  of  your  children's  children 
grows  as  touching  a  concern  as  that  of  your 
own.  Again,  when  you  have  married  your 
wife,  you  would  think  you  were  got  upon  a 
hilltop,  and  might  begin  to  go  downward 
by  an  easy  slope.  But  you  have  only  ended 
courting  to  begin  marriage.  Falling  in  love 
and  winning  love  are  often  difficult  tasks  to 
overbearing  and  rebellious  spirits;  but  to 
keep  in  love  is  also  a  business  of  some  im- 
portance, to  which  both  man  and  wife  must 
bring  kindness  and  goodwill.  The  true  love 

i6i 


EL  DORADO 

s^ry  commences  at  the  altar,  when  there 
lies  before  the  married  pair  a  most  beautiful 
contest  of  wisdom  and  generosity,  and  a 
life-long  struggle  towards  an  unattainable 
ideal.  Unattainable?  Ay,  surely  unattain- 
able, from  the  very  fa6l  that  they  are  two 
instead  of  one. 

''Of  making  books  there  is  no  end,"  com- 
plained the  Preacher;  and  did  not  perceive 
how  highly  he  was  praising  letters  as  an 
occupation.  There  is  no  end,  indeed,  to 
making  books  or  experiments,  or  to  travel, 
or  to  gathering  wealth.  Problem  gives  rise 
to  problem.  We  may  study  for  ever,  and  we 
are  never  as  learned  as  we  would.  We  have 
never  made  a  statue  worthy  of  our  dreams. 
And  when  we  have  discovered  a  continent, 
or  crossed  a  chain  of  mountains,  it  is  only  to 
find  another  ocean  or  another  plain  upon  the 
further  side.  In  the  infinite  universe  there  is 
room  for  our  swiftest  diligence  and  to  spare. 
It  is  not  like  the  works  of  Carlyle,  which  can 
be  read  to  an  end.  Even  in  a  corner  of  it,  in 
a  private  park,  or  in  the  neighbourhood  of  a 
single  hamlet,  the  weather  and  the  seasons 
keep  so  deftly  changing  that  although  we 
162 


EL  DORADO 
wafk  there  for  a  lifetime  there  will  be  always 
something  new  to  startle  and  delight  us. 

There  is  only  one  wish  realisable  on  the 
earth;  only  one  thing  that  can  be  perfedly 
attained:  Death.  And  from  a  variety  of 
circumstances  we  have  no  one  to  tell  us 
whether  it  be  worth  attaining. 

A  strange  pidure  we  make  on  our  way  to 
our  chimaeras,  ceaselessly  marching,  grudg- 
ing ourselves  the  time  for  rest ;  indefatigable, 
adventurous  pioneers.  It  is  true  that  we  shall 
never  reach  the  goal;  it  is  even  more  than 
probable  that  there  is  no  such  place;  and  if 
we  lived  for  centuries  and  were  endowed 
with  the  powers  of  a  god,  we  should  find 
ourselves  not  much  nearer  what  we  wanted 
at  the  end.  O  toiling  hands  of  mortals !  O  un- 
wearied feet,  traveUing  ye  know  not  whither ! 
Soon,  soon,  it  seems  to  you,  you  must  come 
forth  on  some  conspicuous  hilltop,  and  but 
a  little  way  further,  against  the  setting  sun, 
descry  the  spires  of  El  Dorado.  Little  do  ye 
know  your  own  blessedness;  for  to  travel 
hopefully  is  a  better  thing  than  to  arrive,  and 
the  true  success  is  to  labour. 


163 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

"Whether  it  be  wise  in  men  to  do  such  adions  or  no, 
i  am  sure  it  is  so  in  States  to  honour  them."  —  Sir  Wil- 
liam Temple. 

'HERE  is  one  story  of  the  wars  of 
Rome  which  I  have  always  very 
much  envied  for  England.  Ger- 
manicus  was  going  down  at  the  head  of  the 
legions  into  a  dangerous  river  —  on  the  op- 
posite bank  the  woods  were  full  of  Germans 
—  when  there  flew  out  seven  great  eagles 
which  seemed  to  marshal  the  Romans  on 
their  way;  they  did  not  pause  or  waver,  but 
disappeared  into  the  forest  where  the  enemy 
lay  concealed.  *'  Forward!  "  cried  Germani- 
cus,  with  a  fine  rhetorical  inspiration,  * '  For- 
ward! and  follow  the  Roman  birds."  It 
would  be  a  very  heavy  spirit  that  did  not 
give  a  leap  at  such  a  signal,  and  a  very  timor- 
ous one  that  continued  to  have  any  doubt  of 
success.  To  appropriate  the  eagles  as  fellow- 
countrymen  was  to  make  imaginary  allie-s  of 
164 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

the  forces  of  nature;  the  Roman  Empire  and 
its  military  fortunes,  and  along  with  these 
the  prospers  of  those  individual  Roman 
legionaries  now  fording  a  river  in  Germany, 
looked  altogether  greater  and  more  hopeful. 
It  is  a  kind  of  illusion  easy  to  produce.  A 
particular  shape  of  cloud,  the  appearance  of 
a  particular  star,  the  holiday  of  some  particu- 
lar saint,  anything  in  short  to  remind  the 
combatants  of  patriotic  legends  or  old  suc- 
cesses, may  be  enough  to  change  the  issue 
of  a  pitched  battle;  for  it  gives  to  the  one 
party  a  feeling  that  Right  and  the  larger  in- 
terests are  with  them. 

If  an  Englishman  wishes  to  have  such  a 
feeling,  it  must  be  about  the  sea.  The  lion 
is  nothing  to  us;  he  has  not  been  taken  to 
the  hearts  of  the  people,  and  naturalised  as 
an  English  emblem.  We  know  right  well 
that  a  lion  would  fall  foul  of  us  as  grimly  as 
he  would  of  a  Frenchman  or  a  Moldavian 
Jew,  and  we  do  not  carry  him  before  us  in 
the  smoke  of  battle.  But  the  sea  is  our  ap- 
proach and  bulwark;  it  has  been  the  scene 
of  our  greatest  triumphs  and  dangers;  and 
we  are  accustomed  in  lyrical  strains  to  claim 

165 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

it  as  our  own.  The  prostrating  experiences 
of  foreigners  between  Calais  and  Dover  have 
always  an  agreeable  side  to  English  prepos- 
sessions. A  man  from  Bedfordshire,  who 
does  not  know  one  end  of  the  ship  from  the 
other  until  she  begins  to  move,  swaggers 
among  such  persons  with  a  sense  of  heredi- 
tary nautical  experience.  To  suppose  your- 
self endowed  with  natural  parts  for  the  sea 
because  you  are  the  countryman  of  Blake 
and  mighty  Nelson,  is  perhaps  just  as  un- 
warrantable as  to  imagine  Scotch  extraction 
a  sufficient  guarantee  that  you  will  look  well 
in  a  kilt.  But  the  feeling  is  there,  and  seated 
beyond  the  reach  of  argument.  We  should 
consider  ourselves  unworthy  of  our  descent 
if  we  did  not  share  the  arrogance  of  our  pro- 
genitors, and  please  ourselves  with  the  pre- 
tension that  the  sea  is  English.  Even  where 
it  is  looked  upon  by  the  guns  and  battle- 
ments of  another  nation  we  regard  it  as  a 
kind  of  English  cemetery,  where  the  bones 
of  our  seafaring  fathers  take  their  rest  until 
the  last  trumpet;  for  I  suppose  no  other  na- 
tion has  lost  as  many  ships,  or  sent  as  many 
brave  fellows  to  the  bottom. 
1 66 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

There  is  nowhere  such  a  background  for 
heroism  as  the  noble,  terrifying,  and  pidur- 
esque  conditions  of  some  of  our  sea  fights. 
Hawke's  battle  in  the  tempest,  and  Aboukir 
at  the  moment  when  the  French  Admiral 
blew  up,  reach  the  limit  of  what  is  imposing 
to  the  imagination.  And  our  naval  annals 
owe  some  of  their  interest  to  the  fantastic 
and  beautiful  appearance  of  old  warships 
and  the  romance  that  invests  the  sea  and 
everything  sea-going  in  the  eyes  of  English 
lads  on  a  half-holiday  at  the  coast.  Nay,  and 
what  we  know  of  the  misery  between  decks 
enhances  the  bravery  of  what  was  done  by 
giving  it  something  for  contrast.  We  like  to 
know  that  these  bold  and  honest  fellows 
contrived  to  live,  and  to  keep  bold  and  hon- 
est, among  absurd  and  vile  surroundings. 
No  reader  can  forget  the  description  of  the 
Thunderin  Roden'ck  Random:  thedisovderly 
tyranny  ;  the  cruelty  and  dirt  of  officers  and 
men  ;  deck  after  deck,  each  with  some  new 
objed  of  offence ;  the  hospital,  where  the 
hammocks  were  huddled  together  with  but 
fourteen  inches  space  for  each  ;  the  cockpit, 
far  under  water,  where,  "in  an  intolerable 

167 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

stench,"  the  spedacled  steward  kept  the  ac- 
countsofthedifTerentmesses;andthecanvas 
enclosure,  six  feet  square,  in  which  Morgan 
made  flip  and  salmagundi,  smoked  his  pipe, 
sang  his  Welsh  songs,  and  swore  his  queer 
Welsh  imprecations.  There  are  portions  of 
this  business  on  board  the  Thunder  over 
which  the  reader  passes  lightly  and  hur- 
riedly, like  a  traveller  in  a  malarious  country. 
It  is  easy  enough  to  understand  the  opinion 
of  Dr.  Johnson:  "Why,  sir,"  he  said,  *'no 
man  will  be  a  sailor  who  has  contrivance 
enoughtogethimself  into  a  jail."  You  would 
fancy  any  one's  spirit  would  die  out  under 
such  an  accumulation  of  darkness,  noisome- 
ness,  and  injustice,  above  all  when  he  had 
not  come  there  of  his  own  free  will,  but  un- 
der the  cutlasses  and  bludgeons  of  the  press- 
gang.  But  perhaps  a  watch  on  deck  in  the 
sharp  sea  air  put  a  man  on  his  mettle  again ; 
a  battle  must  have  been  a  capital  relief;  and 
prize-money,  bloodily  earned  and  grossly 
squandered,  opened  the  doors  of  the  prison 
for  a  twinkling.  Somehow  or  other,  at  least, 
this  worst  of  possible  lives  could  not  overlie 
the  spirit  and  gaiety  of  our  sailors;  they  di4 
168 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

/heir  duty  as  though  they  had  some  interest 
in  the  fortune  of  that  country  which  so 
cruelly  oppressed  them,  they  served  their 
guns  merrily  when  it  came  to  fighting,  and 
they  had  the  readiest  ear  for  a  bold,  honour- 
able sentiment,  of  any  class  of  men  the  world 
ever  produced. 

Most  men  of  high  destinies  have  high- 
sounding  names.  Pym  and  Habakkuk  may 
do  pretty  well,  but  they  must  not  think  to 
cope  with  the  Cromwells  and  Isaiahs.  And 
you  could  not  find  a  better  case  in  point 
than  that  of  the  English  Admirals.  Drake 
and  Rooke  and  Hawke  are  picked  names 
for  men  of  execution.  Frobisher,  Rodney, 
Boscawen,  Foul-Weather  Jack  Byron,  are 
all  good  to  catch  the  eye  in  a  page  of  a  naval 
history.  Cloudesley  Shovel  is  a  mouthful  of 
quaint  and  sounding  syllables.  Benbow  has 
a  bulldog  quality  that  suits  the  man's  char- 
acter, and  it  takes  us  back  to  those  English 
archers  who  were  his  true  comrades  for 
plainness,  tenacity  and  pluck.  Raleigh  is 
spirited  and  martial^  and  signifies  an  aft  of 
bold  condud  in  the  field.  It  is  impossible  to 
judge  of  Blake  or  Nelson,  no  names  current 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

among  men  being  worthy  of  such  heroes 
But  still  it  is  odd  enough,  and  very  appro^ 
priate  in  this  connection,  that  the  latter  was 
greatly  taken  with  his  Sicilian  title.  'The 
signification,  perhaps,  pleased  him,"  says 
Southey ;  **  Duke  of  Thunder  was  what  in 
Dahomey  would  have  been  called  a  strong 
name  ;  it  was  to  a  sailor's  taste,  and  certain- 
ly to  no  man  could  it  be  more  applicable." 
Admiral  in  itself  is  one  of  the  most  satisfac- 
tory of  distinctions;  it  has  a  noble  sound 
and  a  very  proud  history;  and  Columbus 
thought  so  highly  of  it,  that  he  enjoined  his 
heirs  to  sign  themselves  by  that  title  as  long 
as  the  house  should  last. 

But  it  is  the  spirit  of  the  men,  and  not 
their  names,  that  I  wish  to  speak  about  in 
this  paper.  That  spirit  is  truly  English;  they, 
and  not  Tennyson's  cotton-spinners  or  Mr. 
D'Arcy  Thompson's  Abstra(5t  Bagman,  are 
the  true  and  typical  Englishmen.  There  may 
be  more  head  of  bagmen  in  the  country, 
but  human  beings  are  reckoned  by  number 
only  in  political  institutions.  And  the  Ad- 
mirals are  typical  in  the  full  force  of  the  word. 
They  are  splendid  examples  of  virtue,  indeed, 
170 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

\kX  of  a  virtue  in  which  most  Enghshmen 
can  claim  a  moderate  share;  and  what  we 
admire  in  their  lives  is  a  sort  of  apotheosis 
of  ourselves.  Almost  everybody  in  our  land 
except  humanitarians  and  a  few  persons 
whose  youth  has  been  depressed  by  excep- 
tionally aesthetic  surroundings,  can  under- 
-itand  and  sympathise  with  an  Admiral  or  a 
prize-fighter.  1  do  not  wish  to  bracket  Ben- 
bow  and  Tom  Cribb;  but,  depend  upon  it, 
they  are  practically  bracketed  for  admira- 
tion in  the  minds  of  many  frequenters  of 
ale-bouses.  If  you  told  them  about  German- 
icus  and  the  eagles,  or  Regulus  going  back 
to  Carthage,  they  would  very  likely  fall 
asleep ;  but  tell  them  about  Harry  Pearce  and 
Jem  Belcher,  or  about  Nelson  and  the  Nile, 
and  they  put  downtheir  pipes  to  listen.  I  have 
by  me  a  copy  oiBoxiana,  on  the  fly-leaves 
of  which  a  youthful  member  of  the  fancy 
kept  a  chronicle  of  remarkable  events  and 
an  obituary  of  great  men.  Here  we  find  pi- 
ously chronicled  the  demise  of  jockeys,  wa- 
termen, and  pugilists — Johnny  Moore,  of 
the  Liverpool  Prize  Ring;  Tom  Spring,  aged 
fifty-six;  "Pierce  Egan,  senior,  writer  of 

171 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

Boxiana,  and  other  sporting  works  "  —  and 
among  all  these,  the  Duke  of  Wellington! 
If  Benbow  had  lived  in  the  time  of  this  an- 
nalist, do  you  suppose  his  name  would  not 
have  been  added  to  the  glorious  roll  ?  In 
short,  we  do  not  all  feel  warmly  towards 
Wesley  or  Laud,  we  cannot  all  take  pleas- 
ure in  Paradise  Lost;  but  there  are  certain 
common  sentiments  and  touches  of  nature 
by  which  the  whole  nation  is  made  to  feel 
kinship.  A  little  while  ago  everybody  from 
Hazlitt  and  John  Wilson  down  to  the  im- 
becile creature  who  scribbled  his  register  on 
the  fly-leaves  of  Boxiana,  felt  a  more  or  less 
shamefaced  satisfadion  in  the  exploits  of 
prize-fighters.  And  the  exploits  of  the  Admi- 
rals are  popular  to  the  same  degree,  and  tell 
in  all  ranks  of  society.  Their  sayings  and 
doings  stir  English  blood  like  the  sound  of  a 
trumpet;  and  if  the  Indian  Empire,  the  trade 
of  London,  and  all  the  outward  and  visible 
ensigns  of  our  greatness  should  pass  away, 
we  should  still  leave  behind  us  a  durable 
monument  of  what  we  were  in  these  say- 
ings and  doings  of  the  Enghsh  Admirals. 
Duncan,  lying  off  the  Texel  with  his  own 
172 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

flagship,  the  Venerable,  and  only  one  other 
vessel,  heard  that  the  whole  Dutch  fleet 
was  putting  to  sea.  He  told  Captain  Hotham 
to  anchor  alongside  of  him  in  the  narrowest 
part  of  the  channel,  and  fight  his  vessel  till 
she  sank.  'M  have  taken  the  depth  of  the 
water,"  added  he,  ''and  when  the  Vener- 
able goes  down,  my  flag  will  still  fly."  And 
you  observe  this  is  no  naked  Viking  in  a 
prehistoric  period;  but  a  Scotch  member  of 
Parliament,  with  a  smattering  of  the  classics, 
a  telescope,  a  cocked  hat  of  great  size,  and 
flannel  underclothing.  In  the  same  spirit, 
Nelson  went  into  Aboukir  with  six  colours 
flying;  so  that  even  if  five  were  shot  away, 
it  should  not  be  imagined  he  had  struck. 
He  too  must  needs  wear  his  four  stars  out- 
side his  Admiral's  frock,  to  be  a  butt  for 
sharpshooters.  "  In  honour  I  gained  them," 
he  said  to  objedors,  adding  with  sublime 
illogicality,  'Mn  honour  I  will  die  with 
them."  Captain  Douglas  of  the  Royal  Oak, 
when  the  Dutch  fired  his  vessel  in  the 
Thames,  sent  his  men  ashore,  but  was 
burned  along  with  herhimself  ratherthan  de- 
sert his  post  without  orders.  Just  then,  per- 

173 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

haps  the  Merry  Monarch  was  chasing  a  moth 
round  the  supper-table  with  the  ladies  of  his 
court.  When  Raleigh  sailed  into  Cadiz,  and 
all  the  forts  and  ships  opened  fire  on  him  at 
once,  he  scorned  to  shoot  a  gun,  and  made 
answer  with  a  flourish  of  insulting  trum- 
pets. I  like  this  bravado  better  than  the 
wisest  dispositions  to  insure  vidory;  it 
comes  from  the  heart  and  goes  to  it.  God 
has  made  nobler  heroes,  but  he  never  made 
a  finer  gentleman  than  Walter  Raleigh. 
And  as  our  Admirals  were  full  of  heroic 
superstitions,  and  had  a  strutting  and  vain- 
glorious style  of  fight,  so  they  discovered  a 
startling  eagerness  for  battle,  and  courted 
war  like  a  mistress.  When  the  news  came 
to  Essex  before  Cadiz  that  the  attack  had 
been  decided,  he  threw  his  hat  into  the  sea. 
It  is  in  this  way  that  a  schoolboy  hears  of  a 
half-hohday ;  but  this  was  a  bearded  man  of 
great  possessions  who  had  just  been  allowed 
to  risk  his  life.  Benbow  could  not  lie  still  in 
his  bunk  after  he  had  lost  his  leg;  he  must 
be  on  deck  in  a  basket  to  dired  and  ani- 
mate the  fight.  I  said  they  loved  war  like  a 
mistress;  yet  I  think  there  are  not  many 
174 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

mistresses  we  should  continue  to  woo  un- 
der similar  circumstances.  Trowbridge  went 
ashore  with  the  CuUoden,  and  was  able  to 
take  no  part  in  the  battle  of  the  Nile.  **The 
merits  of  that  ship  and  her  gallant  captain," 
wrote  Nelson  to  the  Admiralty,  ''are  too 
well  known  to  benefit  by  anything  I  could 
say.  Her  misfortune  was  great  in  getting 
aground,  while  her  more  fortunate  com- 
panions  were  in  the  full  tide  of  happiness. " 
This  is  a  notable  expression,  and  depi6ts  the 
whole  great-hearted,  big-spoken  stock  of 
the  English  Admirals  to  a  hair.  It  was  to  be 
"in  the  full  tide  of  happiness  "  for  Nelson  to 
destroy  five  thousand  five  hundred  and 
twenty-five  of  his  fellow-creatures,  and  have 
his  own  scalp  torn  open  by  a  piece  of  lang- 
ridge  shot.  Hear  him  again  at  Copenhagen: 
''  A  shot  through  the  mainmast  knocked  the 
sphnters  about;  and  he  observed  to  one  of 
his  officers  with  a  smile,  '  It  is  warm  work, 
and  this  may  be  the  last  to  any  of  us  at  any 
moment;'  and  then,  stopping  short  at  the 
gangway,  added,  with  emotion,  ''  But,  mark 
you  —  /  would  not  he  elsewhere  for  thou- 
sands, 

»75 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

I  must  tell  one  more  story,  which  has 
lately  been  made  familiar  to  us  all,  and  that 
in  one  of  the  noblest  ballads  in  the  English 
language.  1  had  written  my  tame  prose  ab- 
stract, I  shall  beg  the  reader  to  beheve, 
when  I  had  no  notion  that  the  sacred  bard 
designed  an  immortality  for  Greenville.  Sir 
Richard  Greenville  was  Vice-Admiral  to 
Lord  Thomas  Howard,  and  lay  off  the 
Azores  with  the  English  squadron  in  1591. 
He  was  a  noted  tyrant  to  his  crew:  a  dark, 
bullying  fellow  apparently;  and  it  is  related 
of  him  that  he  would  chew  and  swallow 
wineglasses,  by  way  of  convivial  levity,  till 
the  blood  ran  out  of  his  mouth.  When  the 
Spanish  fleet  of  fifty  sail  came  within  sight 
of  the  English,  his  ship,  the  Revenge,  was 
the  last  to  weigh  anchor,  and  was  so  far 
circumvented  by  the  Spaniards,  that  there 
were  but  two  courses  open  —  either  to  turn 
her  back  upon  the  enemy  or  sail  through 
one  of  his  squadrons.  The  first  alternative 
Greenville  dismissed  as  dishonourable  to 
himself,  his  country,  and  her  Majesty's  ship. 
Accordingly,  he  chose  the  latter,  and  steered 
into  the  Spanish  armament.  Several  vessels 
176 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

he  forced  to  luff  and  fall  under  his  lee ;  until, 
about  three  o'clock  of  the  afternoon,  a  great 
ship  of  three  decks  of  ordnance  took  the 
wind  out  of  his  sails,  and  immediately 
boarded.  Thenceforward,  and  all  night  long, 
the  Revenge  held  her  own  single-handed 
against  the  Spaniards.  As  one  ship  was 
beaten  off,  another  took  its  place.  She  en- 
dured, according  to  Raleigh's  computation, 
*'  eight  hundred  shot  of  great  artillery,  be- 
sides many  assaults  and  entries."  By  morn- 
ing the  powder  was  spent,  the  pikes  all 
broken,  not  a  stick  was  standing,  "  nothing 
left  overhead  either  for  flight  or  defence;  " 
six  feet  of  water  in  the  hold;  almost  all  the 
men  hurt;  and  Greenville  himself  in  a  dying 
condition.  To  bring  them  to  this  pass,  a 
fleet  of  fifty  sail  had  been  mauling  them  for 
fifteen  hours,  the  Admiral  of  the  Hulks  and 
the  y^s^^«5/o;z  of  Seville  had  both  gone  down 
alongside,  and  two  other  vessels  had  taken 
refuge  onshore  in  a  sinking  state.  In  Hawke's 
words,  they  had  "taken  a  great  deal  of 
drubbing."  The  captain  and  crew  thought 
they  had  done  about  enough;  but  Green- 
ville was  not  of  this  opinion;  he  gave  orders 

177 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

to  the  master  gunner,  whom  he  knew  to  be 
a  fellow  after  his  own  stamp,  to  scuttle  the 
Revenge  where  she  lay.  The  others,  who 
were  not  mortally  wounded  like  the  Admiral, 
interfered  with  some  decision,  locked  the 
master  gunner  in  his  cabin,  after  having  de- 
prived him  of  his  sword,  for  he  manifested 
an  intention  to  kill  himself  if  he  were  not  to 
sink  the  ship;  and  sent  to  the  Spaniards  to 
demand  terms.  These  were  granted.  The 
second  or  third  day  after,  Greenville  died  of 
his  wounds  aboard  the  Spanish  flagship, 
leaving  his  contempt  upon  the  "traitors  and 
dogs  "  who  had  not  chosen  to  do  as  he  did, 
and  engage  fifty  vessels,  well  found  and  fully 
manned,  with  six  inferior  craft  ravaged  by 
sickness  and  short  of  stores.  He  at  least,  he 
said,  had  done  his  duty  as  he  was  bound  to 
do,  and  looked  for  everlasting  fame. 

Some  one  said  to  me  the  other  day  that 
they  considered  this  story  to  be  of  a  pesti- 
lent example.  1  am  not  inclined  to  imagine 
we  shall  ever  be  put  into  any  pradical  diffi- 
culty from  a  superfluity  of  Greenvilles.  And 
besides,  I  demur  to  the  opinion.  The  worth 
of  such  adions  is  not  a  thing  to  be  decided 
178 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS  . 

in  a  quaver  of  sensibility  or  a  flush  of  right- 
eous commonsense.  The  man  who  wished 
to  make  the  ballads  of  his  country,  coveted 
a  small  matter  compared  to  what  Richard 
Greenville  accomplished.  I  wonder  how 
many  people  have  been  inspired  by  this  mad 
story,  and  how  many  battles  have  been  ac- 
tually won  for  England  in  the  spirit  thus 
engendered.  It  is  only  with  a  measure  of 
habitual  foolhardiness  that  you  can  be  sure, 
in  the  common  run  of  men,  of  courage  on  a 
reasonable  occasion.  An  army  or  a  fleet,  if 
it  is  not  led  by  quixotic  fancies,  will  not  be 
led  far  by  terror  of  the  Provost  Marshal. 
Even  German  warfare,  in  addition  to  maps 
and  telegraphs,  is  not  above  employing  the 
Wacht  am  Rhein.  Nor  is  it  only  in  the  pro- 
fession of  arms  that  such  stories  may  do  good 
to  a  man.  In  this  desperate  and  gleeful  fight- 
ing, whether  it  is  Greenville  or  Benbow, 
Hawke  or  Nelson,  who  flies  his  colours  in 
the  ship,  we  see  men  brought  to  the  test  and 
giving  proof  of  what  we  call  heroic  feeling. 
Prosperous  humanitarians  tell  me,  in  my 
club  smoking-room,  that  they  are  a  prey  to 
prodigious  heroic  feelings,  and  that  it  costs 

179 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

them  more  nobility  of  soul  to  do  nothing  in 
particular,  than  would  carry  on  all  the  wars, 
by  sea  or  land,  of  bellicose  humanity.  It  may 
very  well  be  so,  and  yet  not  touch  the  point 
in  question.  For  what  I  desire  is  to  see  some 
of  this  nobility  brought  face  to  face  with  me 
in  an  inspiriting  achievement.  A  man  may 
talk  smoothly  over  a  cigar  in  my  club  smok- 
ing-room from  now  to  the  Day  of  Judg- 
ment, without  adding  anything  to  man- 
kind's treasury  of  illustrious  and  encourag- 
ing examples.  It  is  not  over  the  virtues  of  a 
curate-and-tea-party  novel,  that  people  are 
abashed  into  high  resolutions.  It  maybe  be- 
cause their  hearts  are  crass,  but  to  stir  them 
properly  they  must  have  men  entering  into 
glory  with  some  pomp  and  circumstance. 
And  that  is  why  these  stories  of  our  sea- 
captains,  printed,  so  to  speak,  in  capitals, 
and  full  of  bracing  moral  influence,  are  more 
valuable  to  England  than  any  material  bene- 
fit in  all  the  books  of  political  economy  be- 
tweenWestminster and  Birmingham.  Green- 
ville chewing  wineglasses  at  table  makes  no 
very  pleasant  figure,  any  more  than  a  thou- 
sand other  artists  when  they  are  viewed  in 
i8o 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

the  body,  or  met  in  private  life ;  but  his  work 
of  art,  his  finished  tragedy,  is  an  eloquent 
performance;  and  1  contend  it  ought  not 
only  to  enliven  men  of  the  sword  as  they  go 
into  battle,  but  send  back  merchant  clerks 
with  more  heart  and  spirit  to  their  book- 
keeping by  double  entry. 

There  is  another  question  which  seems 
bound  up  in  this;  and  that  is  Temple's 
problem:  whether  it  was  wise  of  Douglas 
to  burn  with  the  Royal  Oak  ?  and  by  impli- 
cation, what  it  was  that  made  him  do  so? 
Many  will  tell  you  it  was  the  desire  of  fame. 

"To  what  do  Caesar  and  Alexander  owe 
the  infinite  grandeur  of  their  renown,  but  to 
fortune?  How  many  men  has  she  extin- 
guished in  the  beginning  of  their  progress, 
of  whom  we  have  no  knowledge;  who 
brought  as  much  courage  to  the  work  as 
they,  if  their  adverse  hap  had  not  cut  them 
off  in  the  first  sally  of  their  arms  ?  Amongst 
so  many  and  so  great  dangers,  I  do  not  re- 
member to  have  anywhere  read  that  Csesar 
was  ever  wounded;  a  thousand  have  fallen 
in  less  dangers  than  the  least  of  these  he 
went  through.  A  great  many  brave  adions 

i8i 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 
must  be  expeded  to  be  performed  without 
witness,  for  one  that  comes  to  some  notice. 
A  man  is  not  always  at  the  top  of  a  breach, 
or  at  the  head  of  an  army  in  the  sight  of  his 
general,  as  upon  a  platform.  He  is  often  sur- 
prised between  the  hedge  and  the  ditch:  he 
must  run  the  hazard  of  his  life  against  a 
henroost;  he  must  dislodge  four  rascally 
musketeers  out  of  a  barn ;  he  must  prick  out 
single  from  his  party,  as  necessity  arises, 
and  meet  adventures  alone." 

Thus  far  Montaigne,  in  a  characteristic 
essay  on  Glory.  Where  death  is  certain,  as 
in  the  cases  of  Douglas  or  Greenville,  it 
seems  all  one  from  a  personal  point  of  view. 
The  man  who  lost  his  life  against  a  henroost, 
is  in  the  same  pickle  with  him  who  lost  his 
life  against  a  fortified  place  of  the  tlrst  or- 
der. Whether  he  has  missed  a  peerage  or 
only  the  corporal's  stripes,  it  is  all  one  if  he 
has  missed  them  and  is  quietly  in  the  grave. 
It  was  by  a  hazard  that  we  learned  the  con- 
du(ft  of  the  four  marines  of  the  Wager. 
There  was  no  room  for  these  brave  fellows 
in  the  boat,  and  they  were  left  behind  upon 
the  island  to  a  certain  death.  They  were  sol- 
182 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

diers,  they  said,  and  knew  well  enough  it 
was  their  business  to  die;  and  as  their  com- 
rades pulled  away,  they  stood  upon  the 
beach,  gave  three  cheers,  and  cried  ''God 
bless  the  king!"  Now,  one  or  two  of  those 
who  were  in  the  boat  escaped,  against  all 
likelihood,  to  tell  the  story.  That  was  a  great 
thing  for  us;  but  surely  it  cannot,  by  any 
possible  twisting  of  human  speech,  be  con- 
strued into  anything  great  for  the  marines. 
You  may  suppose,  if  you  like,  that  they  died 
hoping  their  behaviour  would  not  be  for- 
gotten; or  you  may  suppose  they  thought 
nothing  on  the  subjed,  which  is  much  more 
likely.  What  can  be  the  signification  of  the 
word  "fame  "  to  a  private  of  marines,  who 
cannot  read  and  knows  nothing  of  past  his- 
tory beyond  the  reminiscences  of  his  grand- 
mother ?  But  whichever  supposition  you 
make,  the  fad  is  unchanged.  They  died 
while  the  question  still  hung  in  the  balance; 
and  I  suppose  their  bones  were  already 
white,  before  the  winds  and  the  waves  and 
the  humour  of  Indian  chiefs  and  Span- 
ish governors  had  decided  whether  they 
were  to  be  unknown  and  useless  martyrs 

183 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

or  honoured  heroes.  Indeed,  I  believe  this  is 
the  lesson:  if  it  is  for  fame  that  men  do 
brave  adions,  they  are  only  silly  fellows 
after  all. 

It  is  at  best  but  a  pettifogging,  pickthank 
business  to  decompose  adions  into  little 
personal  motives,  and  explain  heroism 
away.  The  Abstract  Bagman  will  grow  like 
an  Admiral  at  heart,  not  by  ungrateful  carp- 
ing, but  in  a  heat  of  admiration.  But  there 
is  another  theory  of  the  personal  motive  in 
these  fine  sayings  and  doings,  which  I  be- 
lieve to  be  true  and  wholesome.  People  usu- 
ally do  things,  and  suffer  martyrdoms, 
because  they  have  an  inclination  that  way. 
The  best  artist  is  not  the  man  who  fixes  his 
eye  on  posterity,  but  the  one  who  loves  the 
practice  of  his  art.  And  instead  of  having  a 
taste  for  being  successful  merchants  and  re- 
tiring at  thirty,  some  people  have  a  taste  for 
high  and  what  we  call  heroic  forms  of  ex- 
citement. If  the  Admirals  courted  war  like  a 
mistress ;  if,  as  the  drum  beat  to  quarters, 
the  sailors  came  gaily  out  of  the  forecastle, 
—  it  is  because  a  fight  is  a  period  of  multi- 
plied and  intense  experiences,  and,  by  Nel- 
184 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 
son's  computation,  worth  "thousands"  to 
any  one  who  has  a  heart  under  his  jacket. 
If  the  marines  of  the  IVager  guv  q  three  cheers 
and  cried  "God  bless  the  king,"  it  was  be- 
cause they  Hked  to  do  things  nobly  for  their 
own  satisfadion.  They  were  giving  their 
lives,  there  was  no  help  for  that;  and  they 
made  it  a  point  of  self-resped  to  give  them 
handsomely.  And  there  were  never  four  hap- 
pier marines  in  God's  world  than  these  four 
at  that  moment.  If  it  was  worth  thousands 
to  be  at  the  Baltic,  I  wish  a  Benthamite  arith- 
metician would  calculate  how  much  it  was 
worth  to  be  one  of  these  four  marines;  or 
how  much  their  story  is  worth  to  each  of  us 
who  read  it.  And  mark  you,  undemonstra- 
tive men  would  have  spoiled  the  situation. 
The  finest  adion  is  the  better  for  a  piece  of 
purple.  If  the  soldiers  of  the  Birkenhead  had 
not  gone  down  in  line,  or  these  marines  of 
the  JVager  had  walked  away  simply  into  the 
island,  hke  plenty  of  other  brave  fellows  in 
the  like  circumstances,  my  Benthamite  arith- 
metician would  assign  a  far  lower  value  to 
the  two  stories.  We  have  to  desire  a  grand 
air  in  our  heroes;  and  such  a  knowledge  of 

185 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

the  human  stage  as  shall  make  them  put  the 
dots  on  their  own  i's,  and  leave  us  in  no  sus- 
pense as  to  when  they  mean  to  be  heroic. 
And  hence,  we  should  congratulate  ourselves 
upon  the  fa6l  that  our  Admirals  were  not 
only  great-hearted  but  big-spoken. 

The  heroes  themselves  say,  as  often  as 
not,  that  fame  is  their  objed,  but  I  do  not 
think  that  is  much  to  the  purpose.  People 
generally  say  what  they  have  been  taught 
to  say;  that  was  the  catchword  they  were 
given  in  youth  to  express  the  aims  of  their 
way  of  life;  and  men  who  are  gaining  great 
battles  are  not  likely  to  take  much  trouble  in 
reviewing  their  sentiments  and  the  words 
in  which  they  were  .told  to  express  them. 
Almost  every  person,  Jyou  will  believe  him- 
self, holds  a  quite  different  theory  of  life  from 
the  one  on  which  he  is  patently  ading.  And 
the  fad  is,  fame  may  be  a  forethought  and 
an  afterthought,  but  it  is  too  abstrad  an  idea 
to  move  people  greatly  in  moments  of  swift 
and  momentous  decision.  It  is  from  some- 
thing more  immediate,  some  determination 
of  blood  to  the  head,  some  trick  of  the  fancy, 
that  the  breach  is  stormed  or  the  bold  word 
186 


THE  ENGLISH  ADMIRALS 

spoken.  I  am  sure  a  fellow  shooting  an  ugly 
weir  in  a  canoe  has  exadly  as  much  thought 
about  fame  as  most  commanders  going  into 
battle;  and  yet  the  adion,  fall  out  how  it 
will,  is  not  one  of  those  the  muse  delights 
to  celebrate.  Indeed  it  is  difficult  to  see  why 
the  fellow  does  a  thing  so  nameless  and  yet 
so  formidable  to  look  at,  unless  on  the  theory 
that  he  likes  it.  I  suspe6l  that  is  why;  and  I 
suspe^l  it  is  at  least  ten  per  cent  of  why  Lord 
Beaconsfield  and  Mr.  Gladstone  have  debated 
so  much  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and 
why  Burnaby  rode  to  Khiva  the  other  day, 
and  why  the  Admirals  courted  war  like  a 
mistress. 


187 


SOME  PORTRAITS  BY 
RAEBURN 

'HROUGH  the  initiative  of  a  promi- 
nent citizen,  Edinburgh  has  been 
in  possession,  for  some  autumn 
weeks,  of  a  gallery  of  paintings  of  singular 
merit  and  interest.  They  were  exposed  in 
the  apartments  of  the  Scotch  Academy;  and 
filled  those  who  are  accustomed  to  visit  the 
annual  spring  exhibition,  with  astonishment 
and  a  sense  of  incongruity.  Instead  of  the 
too  common  purple  sunsets,  and  pea-green 
fields,  and  distances  executed  in  putty  and 
hog's  lard,  he  beheld,  looking  down  upon 
him  from  the  walls  of  room  after  room,  a 
whole  army  of  wise,  grave,  humorous, 
capable,  or  beautiful  countenances,  painted 
simply  and  strongly  by  a  man  of  genuine 
instinct.  It  was  a  complete  ad  of  the  Human 
Drawing-Room  Comedy.  Lords  and  ladies, 
soldiers  and  dodors,  hanging  judges,  and 
heretical  divines,  a  whole  generation  of  good 
1 88 


PORTRAITS  BY  RAEBURN 

society  was  resuscitated;  and  the  Scotch- 
man of  to-day  walked  amongthe  Scotchmen 
of  two  generations  ago.  The  moment  was 
well  chosen,  neither  too  late  nor  too  early. 
The  people  who  sat  for  these  pictures  are  not 
yet  ancestors,  they  are  still  relations.  They 
are  not  yet  altogether  a  part  of  the  dusty 
past,but  occupy  a  middle  distance  within  cry 
of  our  affedions.  The  little  child  who  looks 
wonderingly  on  his  grandfather's  watch  in 
the  pidure,  is  now  the  veteran  Sheriff  emeri- 
tus of  Perth.  And  I  hear  a  story  of  a  lady  who 
returned  the  other  day  to  Edinburgh,  after 
an  absence  of  sixty  years :  "  1  could  see  none 
of  my  old  friends,"  she  said,  ''  until  I  went 
into  the  Raeburn  Gallery,  and  found  them 
all  there." 

It  would  be  difficult  to  say  whether  the 
colle6lion  was  more  interesting  on  the  score 
of  unity  or  diversity.  Where  the  portraits 
were  all  of  the  same  period,  almost  all  of  the 
same  race,  and  all  from  the  same  brush, there 
could  not  fail  to  be  many  points  of  similarity. 
And  yet  the  similarity  of  the  handling  seems 
to  throw  into  more  vigorous  relief  those  per- 
sonal distinctions  which  Raeburn  was  so 


POR  TRAITS  BY  RAEB  URN 

quick  to  seize.  He  was  a  born  painter  of 
portraits.  He  looked  people  shrewdly  be- 
tween the  eyes,  surprised  their  manners  in 
their  face,  and  had  possessed  himself  of  what 
was  essential  in  their  charader  before  they 
had  been  many  minutes  in  his  studio.  What 
he  was  so  swift  to  perceive,  he  conveyed  to 
the  canvas  almost  in  the  moment  of  concep- 
tion. He  had  never  any  difficulty,  he  said, 
about  either  hands  or  faces.  About  draperies 
or  light  or  composition,  he  might  see  room 
for  hesitation  or  afterthought.  But  a  face  or 
a  hand  was  something  plain  and  legible. 
There  were  no  two  ways  about  it,  any  more 
than  about  the  person's  name.  And  so  each 
of  his  portraits  are  not  only  (in  Dodor  John- 
son's phrase,  aptly  quoted  on  the  catalogue) 
' '  a  piece  of  history, "  but  a  piece  of  biography 
into  the  bargain.  It  is  devoutly  to  be  wished 
that  all  biography  were  equally  amusing, 
and  carried  its  own  credentials  equally  upon 
its  face.  These  portraits  are  racier  than  many 
anecdotes,  and  more  complete  than  many  a 
volume  of  sententious  memoirs.  You  can  sec 
whether  you  get  a  stronger  and  clearer  idea 
of  Robertson  the  historian  from  Raeburp  ' 
190 


PORTRAITS  BY  RAEB  URN 

palette  or  Dugald  Stewart's  woolly  and  eva- 
sive periods.  And  then  the  portraits  are  both 
signed  and  countersigned.  For  you  have, 
first,  the  authority  of  the  artist,  whom  you 
recognise  as  no  mean  critic  of  the  looks  and 
manners  of  men ;  and  next  you  have  the  tacit 
acquiescence  of  thesubjed,  who  sits  looking 
out  upon  you  with  inimitable  innocence,and 
apparently  under  the  impression  that  he  is 
in  a  room  by  himself.  For  Raeburn  could 
plunge  at  once  through  all  the  constraint  and 
embarrassment  of  the  sitter,  and  present  the 
face,  clear,  open,  and  intelligent  as  at  the 
most  disengaged  moments.  This  is  best  seen 
in  portraits  where  the  sitter  is  represented 
in  some  appropriate  adion:  Neil  Gow  with 
his  fiddle,  Dodor  Spens  shooting  an  arrow, 
or  Lord  Bannatyne  hearing  a  cause.  Above 
all,  from  this  point  of  view,  the  portrait 
of  Lieutenant-Colonel  Lyon  is  notable.  A 
strange  enough  young  man,  pink,  fat  about 
the  lower  part  of  the  face,  with  a  lean  fore- 
head, a  narrow  nose  and  a  fine  nostril,  sits 
with  a  drawing-board  upon  his  knees.  He 
has  just  paused  to  render  himself  account  of 
some  difficulty,  to  disentangle  some  com- 

191 


POR  TRAITS  BYRAEB  URN 

plication  of  line  or  compare  neighbouring 
values.  And  there,  without  any  perceptible 
wrinkling,  you  have  rendered  for  you  ex- 
actly the  fixed  look  in  the  eyes,  and  the  un- 
conscious compression  of  the  mouth,  that 
befit  and  signify  an  effort  of  the  kind.  The 
whole  pose,  the  whole  expression,  is  abso- 
lutely dire6l  and  simple.  You  are  ready  to 
take  your  oath  to  it  that  Colonel  Lyon  had 
no  idea  he  was  sitting  for  his  picture,  and 
thought  of  nothing  in  the  world  besides  his 
own  occupation  of  the  moment. 

Although  the  colledion  did  not  embrace, 
I  understand,  nearly  the  whole  of  Raeburn's 
works,  it  was  too  large  not  to  contain  some 
that  were  indifferent,  whether  as  works  of 
art  or  as  portraits.  Certainly  the  standard 
was  remarkably  high,  and  was  wonderfully 
maintained,  but  there  were  one  or  two  pic- 
tures that  might  have  been  almost  as  well 
away — one  or  two  that  seemed  wanting  in 
salt,  and  some  that  you  can  only  hope  were 
not  successful  likenesses.  Neither  of  the  por- 
traits of  Sir  Walter  Scott,  for  instance,  were 
very  agreeable  to  look  upon.  You  do  not 
care  to  think  that  Scott  looked  quite  so  rustic 
192 


POR  TRAITS  BYRAEB  URN 

and  puffy.  And  where  is  that  peaked  fore- 
head which,  accordingto  all  written  accounts 
and  many  portraits,  was  the  distinguishing 
characteristic  of  his  face  ?  Again,  in  spite  of 
his  own  satisfaction  and  in  spite  of  Dr.  John 
Brown,  I  cannot  consider  that  Raeburn  was 
very  happy  in  hands.  Without  doubt,  he 
could  paint  one  if  he  had  taken  the  trouble 
to  study  it;  but  it  was  by  no  rneans  always 
that  he  gave  himself  the  trouble.  Looking 
round  one  of  these  rooms  hung  about  with 
his  portraits,  you  were  struck  with  the  ar- 
ray of  expressive  faces,  as  compared  with 
what  you  may  have  seen  in  looking  round  a 
room  full  of  living  people.  But  it  was  not  so 
with  the  hands.  The  portraits  differed  from 
each  other  in  face  perhaps  ten  times  as  much 
as  they  differed  by  the  hand ;  whereas  with 
living  people  the  two  go  pretty  much  to- 
gether; and  where  one  is  remarkable,  the 
other  will  almost  certainly  not  be  common- 
place. 

One  interesting  portrait  was  that  of  Dun- 
can of  Camperdown.  He  stands  in  uniform 
beside  a  table,  his  feet  slightly  straddled 
with  the  balance  of  an  old  sailor,  his  hand 


PORTRAITS  BY  RAEB  URN 

poised  upon  a  chart  by  the  finger  tips.  The 
mouth  is  pursed,  the  nostril  spread  and 
drawn  up,  the  eyebrows  very  highly  arched. 
The  cheeks  lie  along  the  jaw  in  folds  of 
iron,  and  have  the  redness  that  comes  from 
much  exposure  to  salt  sea  winds.  From 
the  whole  figure,  attitude  and  countenance, 
there  breathes  something  precise  and  de- 
cisive, something  alert,  wiry,  and  strong. 
You  can  understand,  from  the  look  of  him, 
that  sense,  not  so  much  of  humour,  as  of 
what  is  grimmest  and  driest  in  pleasantry, 
which  inspired  his  address  before  the  fight 
at  Camperdown.  He  had  just  overtaken  the 
Dutch  fleet  under  Admiral  de  Winter.  ''Gen- 
tlemen," says  he,  ''you  see  a  severe  winter 
approaching;  1  have  only  to  advise  you  to 
keep  up  a  good  fire."  Somewhat  of  this  same 
spirit  of  adamantine  drollery  must  have  sup- 
ported him  in  the  days  of  the  mutiny  at  the 
Nore,  when  he  lay  off  the  Texel  with  his 
own  flagship,  the  Venerable,  and  only  one 
other  vessel,  and  kept  up  adive  signals,  as 
though  he  had  a  powerful  fleet  in  the  offing, 
to  intimidate  the  Dutch. 
Another  portrait  which  irresistibly  at- 
194 


PORTRAITS  BY  RAEB  URN 

traded  the  eye,  was  the  half-length  of 
Robert  M'Queen,  of  Braxfield,  Lord  Justice- 
Clerk.  If  I  know  gusto  in  painting  when  I 
see  it,  this  canvas  was  painted  with  rare  en- 
joyment. The  tart,  rosy,  humorous  look  of 
the  man,  his  nose  like  a  cudgel,  his  face 
resting  squarely  on  the  jowl,  has  been 
caught  and  perpetuated  with  something 
that  looks  like  brotherly  love.  A  pecuHarly 
subtle  expression  haunts  the  lower  part, 
sensual  and  incredulous,  Hke  that  of  a  man 
tasting  good  Bordeaux  with  half  a  fancy  it 
has  been  somewhat  too  long  uncorked. 
From  under  the  pendulous  eyelids  of  old 
age,  the  eyes  look  out  with  a  half-youthful, 
half-frosty  twinkle.  Hands,  with  no  pretence 
to  distindion,  are  folded  on  the  judge's 
stomach.  So  sympathetically  is  the  charader 
conceived  by  the  portrait  painter,  that  it  is 
hardly  possible  to  avoid  some  movement  of 
sympathy  on  the  part  of  the  spedator.  And 
sympathy  is  a  thing  to  be  encouraged,  apart 
from  humane  considerations,  because  it  sup- 
plies us  with  the  materials  for  wisdom.  It  is 
probably  more  instrudive  to  entertain  a 
sneaking  kindness  for  any  unpopular  per- 

^95 


POR  TRAITS  BYRAEB  URN 

son,  and,  among  the  rest,  for  Lord  Braxfield, 
than  to  give  way  to  perfed  raptures  of  moral 
indignation  against  his  abstraA  vices.  He 
was  the  last  judge  on  the  Scotch  bench  to 
employ  the  pure  Scotch  idiom.  His  opinions, 
thus  given  in  Doric,  and  conceived  in  a 
lively,  rugged,  conversational  style,  were 
full  of  point  and  authority.  Out  of  the  bar, 
or  off  the  bench,  he  was  a  convivial  man,  a 
lover  of  wine,  and  one  who  "shone  pecu- 
liarly" at  tavern  meetings.  He  has  left  be- 
hind him  an  unrivalled  reputation  for  rough 
and  cruel  speech ;  and  to  this  day  his  name 
smacks  of  the  gallows.  It  was  he  who  pre- 
sided at  the  trials  of  Muir  and  Skirving  in 
1793  and  1794;  and  his  appearance  on  these 
occasions  was  scarcely  cut  to  the  pattern  of 
to-day.  His  summing  up  on  Muir  began 
thus  —  the  reader  must  supply  for  himself 
''the  growling,  blacksmith's  voice"  and  the 
broad  Scotch  accent:  ''Now  this  is  the 
question  for  consideration  —  Is  the  panel 
guilty  of  sedition,  or  is  he  not  ?  Now,  before 
this  can  be  answered,  two  things  must  be 
attended  to  that  require  no  proof:  First,  that 
the  British  constitution  is  the  best  that  ever 
196 


PORTRAITS  BY  RAEBURN 

was  since  the  creation  of  the  world,  and  it 
is  not  possible  to  make  it  better."  It's  a 
pretty  fair  start,  is  it  not,  for  a  political  trial  ? 
A  little  later,  he  has  occasion  to  refer  to  the 
relations  of  Muir  with  "those  wretches," 
the  French.  "  I  never  liked  the  French  all  my 
days,"  said  his  lordship,  ''but  now  1  hate 
them."  And  yet  a  little  further  on :  **  A  gov- 
ernment in  any  country  should  be  like  a 
corporation;  and  in  this  country  it  is  made 
up  of  the  landed  interest,  which  alone  has 
a  right  to  be  represented.  As  for  the  rabble 
who  have  nothing  but  personal  property, 
what  hold  has  the  nation  of  them  .?  They 
may  pack  up  their  property  on  their  backs, 
and  leave  the  country  in  the  twinkling  of  an 
eye."  After  having  made  profession  of  senti- 
ments so  cynically  anti-popular  as  these, 
when  the  trials  were  at  an  end,  which  was 
generally  about  midnight,  Braxfield  would 
walk  home  to  his  house  in  George  Square 
with  no  better  escort  than  an  easy  con- 
science. 1  think  1  see  him  getting  his  cloak 
about  his  shoulders,  and,  with  perhaps  a 
lantern  in  one  hand,  steering  his  way  along 
the  streets  in  the  mirk  January  night.   It 

197 


PORTRAITS  BY  RAEB  URN 

might  have  been  that  very  day  that  Skirving 
had  defied  him  in  these  words:  "  It  is  aho- 
gether  unavaihng  for  your  lordship  to  men- 
ace me;  for  I  have  long  learned  to  fear  not 
the  face  of  man;  "  and  I  can  fancy,  as  Brax- 
field  refleded  on  the  number  of  what  he 
called  G nimbi etonians  in  Edinburgh,  and  of 
how  many  of  them  must  bear  special  malice 
against  so  upright  and  inflexible  a  judge, 
nay,  and  might  at  that  very  moment  be 
lurking  in  the  mouth  of  a  dark  close  with 
hostile  intent  —  1  can  fancy  that  he  indulged 
in  a  sour  smile,  as  he  reflected  that  he  also 
was  not  especially  afraid  of  men's  faces  or 
men's  fists,  and  had  hitherto  found  no  occa- 
sion to  embody  this  insensibility  in  heroic 
words.  For  if  he  was  an  inhumane  old  gen- 
tleman (and  1  am  afraid  it  is  a  fa6l  that  he 
was  inhumane),  he  was  also  perfectly  intre- 
pid. You  may  look  into  the  queer  face  of 
that  portrait  for  as  long  as  you  will,  but  you 
will  not  see  any  hole  or  corner  for  timidity 
to  enter  in. 

Indeed,  there  would  be  no  end  to  this 
paper  if  1  were  even  to  name  half  of  the  por- 
traits that  were  remarkable  for  their  execu- 


PORTRAITS  BY  RAEBURN 

tion,  or  interesting  by  association.  There 
was  one  pidure  of  Mr.  Wardrop,  of  Torbane 
Hiii,  which  you  might  palm  off  upon  most 
laymen  as  a  Rembrandt;  and  close  by,  you 
saw  the  white  head  of  John  Clerk,  of  Eldin, 
that  country  gentleman  who,  playing  with 
pieces  of  cork  on  his  own  dining-table,  in- 
vented modern  naval  warfare.  There  was 
that  portrait  of  Neil  Gow,  to  sit  for  which 
the  old  fiddler  walked  daily  through  the 
streets  of  Edinburgh  arm  in  arm  with  the 
Duke  of  Athole.  There  was  good  Harry  Ers- 
kine,  with  his  satirical  nose  and  upper  lip, 
and  his  mouth  just  open  for  a  witticism  to 
pop  out;  Hutton  the  geologist,  in  quakerish 
raiment,  and  looking  altogether  trim  and 
narrow,  and  as  if  he  cared  more  about  fossils 
than  young  ladies;  full-blown  John  Robin- 
son, in  hyperboHcal  red  dressing-gown,  and, 
every  inch  of  him,  a  fine  old  man  of  the 
world;  Constable  the  publisher,  upright  be- 
side a  table,  and  bearing  a  corporation  with 
commercial  dignity;  Lord  Bannatyne  hear- 
ing a  cause,  if  ever  anybody  heard  a  cause 
since  the  world  began;  Lord  Newton  just 
awakened  from  clandestine  slumber  on  the 

199 


FOR  TRAITS  B  Y  RAEB  URN 

bench;  and  the  second  President  Dundas, 
with  every  feature  so  fat  that  he  reminds 
you,  in  his  wig,  of  some  droll  old  court  offi- 
cer in  an  illustrated  nursery  story-book,  and 
yet  all  these  fat  features  instind:  with  mean- 
ing, the  fat  lips  curved  and  compressed,  the 
nose  combining  somehow  the  dignity  of  a 
beak  with  the  good  nature  of  a  bottle,  and 
the  very  double  chin  with  an  air  of  intelli- 
gence and  insight.  And  all  these  portraits 
are  so  pat  and  telling,  and  look  at  you  so 
spiritedly  from  the  walls,  that,  compared 
with  the  sort  of  living  people  one  sees  about 
the  streets,  they  are  as  bright  new  sovereigns 
to  fishy  and  obhterated  sixpences.  Some  dis- 
paraging thoughts  upon  our  own  generation 
could  hardly  fail  to  present  themselves;  but 
it  is  perhaps  only  the  sacer  vates  who  is 
wanting;  and  we  also,  painted  by  such  a 
man  as  Carolus  Duran,  may  look  in  holiday 
immortahty  upon  our  children  and  grand- 
children. 

Raeburn's  young  women,  to  be  frank,  are 
by  no  means  of  the  same  order  of  merit.  No 
one.  of  course,  could  be  insensible  to  the 
presence  of  Miss  Janet  Suttie  or  Mrs.  Camp* 

200 


PORTRAITS  BY  RAEBURN 

bell  of  Possil.  When  things  are  as  pretty  as 
that,  criticism  is  out  of  season.  But,  on  the 
whole,  it  is  only  with  women  of  a  certain  age 
that  he  can  be  said  to  have  succeeded,  in  at 
all  the  same  sense  as  we  say  he  succeeded 
with  men.  The  younger  women  do  not  seem 
to  be  made  of  good  flesh  and  blood.  They 
are  not  painted  in  rich  and  unftuous  touches. 
They  are  dry  and  diaphanous.  And  although 
young  ladies  in  Great  Britain  are  all  that  can 
be  desired  of  them,  I  would  fain  hope  they 
are  not  quite  so  much  of  that  as  Raeburn 
would  have  us  believe.  In  all  these  pretty 
faces,  you  miss  character,  you  miss  fire,  you 
miss  that  spice  of  the  devil  which  is  worth 
all  the  prettiness  in  the  world;  and,  what  is 
worst  of  all,  you  miss  sex.  His  young  ladies 
are  not  womanly  to  nearly  the  same  degree 
as  his  men  are  masculine;  they  are  so  in  a 
negative  sense;  in  short,  they  are  the  typical 
young  ladies  of  the  male  novelist. 

To  say  truth,  either  Raeburn  was  timid 
with  young  and  pretty  sitters;  or  he  had 
stupefied  himself  with  sentimentalities;  or 
else  (and  here  is  about  the  truth  of  it)  Rae- 
burn and  the  rest  of  us  labour  under  an  ob- 


POR  TRAITS  BYRAEB  URN 

stinate  blindness  in  one  diredion,  and  know 
very  little  more  about  women  after  all  these 
centuries  than  Adam  when  he  first  saw  Eve. 
This  is  all  the  more  likely,  because  we  are 
by  no  means  so  unintelligent  in  the  matter 
of  old  women.  There  are  some  capital  old 
women,  it  seems  to  me,  in  books  written  by 
men.  And  Raeburn  has  some,  such  as  Mrs. 
Colin  Campbell,  of  Park,  or  the  anonymous 
"Old  lady  with  a  large  cap,"  which  are 
done  in  the  same  frank,  perspicacious  spirit 
as  the  very  best  of  his  men.  He  could  look 
into  their  eyes  without  trouble;  and  he  was 
not  withheld,  by  any  bashful  sentimental- 
ism,  from  recognising  what  he  saw  there 
and  unsparingly  putting  it  down  upon  the 
canvas.  But  where  people  cannot  meet  with- 
out some  confusion  and  a  good  deal  of  in- 
voluntary humbug,  and  are  occupied,  for  as 
long  as  they  are  together,  with  a  very  differ- 
ent vein  of  thought,  there  cannot  be  much 
room  for  intelligent  study  nor  much  result  in 
the  shape  of  genuine  comprehension.  Even 
women,  who  understand  men  so  well  for 
pradical  purposes,  do  not  know  them  well 
enough  for  the  purposes  of  art.  Take  even 


POR  TRAITS  BYRAEB  URN 

the  very  best  of  their  male  creations,  take 
Tito  Melema,  for  instance,  and  you  will  find 
he  has  an  equivocal  air,  and  every  now  and 
again  remembers  he  has  a  comb  at  the  back 
of  his  head.  Of  course,  no  woman  will  believe 
this,  and  many  men  will  be  so  very  polite 
as  to  humour  their  incredulity. 


205 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

^HE  regret  we  have  for  our  child- 
hood is  not  wholly  justifiable:  so 
much  a  man  may  lay  down  without 
fear  of  public  ribaldry;  for  although  we  shake 
our  heads  over  the  change,  we  are  not  un- 
conscious of  the  manifold  advantages  of  our 
new  state.  What  we  lose  in  generous  im- 
pulse, we  more  than  gain  in  the  habit  of  gen- 
erously watching  others ;  and  the  capacity  to 
enjoy  Shakespeare  may  balance  a  lost  apti- 
tude for  playing  at  soldiers.  Terror  is  gone 
out  of  our  lives,  moreover ;  we  no  longer  see 
the  devil  in  the  bed-curtains  nor  lie  awake 
to  listen  to  the  wind.  We  go  to  school  no 
more;  and  if  we  have  only  exchanged  one 
drudgery  for  another  (which  is  by  no  means 
sure),  we  are  set  free  for  ever  from  the  daily 
fear  of  chastisement.  And  yet  a  great  change 
has  overtaken  us ;  and  although  we  do  not  en- 
joy ourselves  less,  at  least  we  take  our  pleas- 
ure differently.  We  need  pickles  nowadays 

204 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

to  make  Wednesday's  cold  mutton  please 
our  Friday's  appetite;  and  1  can  remember 
the  time  when  to  call  it  red  venison,  and  tell 
myself  a  hunter's  story  would  have  made  it 
more  palatable  than  the  best  of  sauces.  To 
the  grown  person,  cold  mutton  is  cold  mut- 
ton all  the  world  over;  not  all  the  mythology 
ever  invented  by  man  will  make  it  better  or 
worse  to  him ;  the  broad  fad,  the  clamant  re- 
ality, of  the  mutton  carries  away  before  it 
such  sedudive  figments.  But  for  the  child  it 
is  still  possible  to  weave  an  enchantment 
over  eatables ;  and  if  he  has  but  read  of  a 
dish  in  a  story-book,  it  will  be  heavenly 
manna  to  him  for  a  week. 

If  a  grown  man  does  not  like  eating  and 
drinking  and  exercise,  if  he  is  not  some- 
thing positive  in  his  tastes,  it  means  he  has 
a  feeble  body  and  should  have  some  medi- 
cine; but  children  may  be  pure  spirits,  if 
they  will,  and  take  their  enjoyment  in  a 
world  of  moonshine.  Sensation  does  not 
count  for  so  much  in  our  first  years  as  after- 
wards; something  of  the  swaddling  numb- 
ness of  infancy  chngs  about  us;  we  see  and 
touch  and  hear  through  a  sort  of  golden  mist. 

205 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

Children,  for  instance,  are  able  enough  to 
see,  but  they  have  no  great  faculty  for  look- 
ing; they  do  not  use  their  eyes  for  the  pleas- 
ure of  using  them,  but  for  by-ends  of  their 
own;  and  the  things  I  call  to  mind  seeing 
most  vividly,  were  not  beautiful  in  them- 
selves, but  merely  interesting  or  enviable  to 
me  as  1  thought  they  might  be  turned  to 
pra6tical  account  in  play.  Nor  is  the  sense 
of  touch  so  clean  and  poignant  in  children 
as  it  is  in  a  man.  If  you  will  turn  over  your 
old  memories,  I  think  the  sensations  of  this 
sort  you  remember  will  be  somewhat  vague, 
and  come  to  not  much  more  than  a  blunt, 
general  sense  of  heat  on  summer  days,  or  a 
blunt,  general  sense  of  wellbeing  in  bed. 
And  here,  of  course,  you  will  understand 
pleasurable  sensations;  for  overmastering 
pain  — the  most  deadly  and  tragical  element 
in  life,  and  the  true  commander  of  man's 
soul  and  body  —  alas !  pain  has  its  own  way 
with  all  of  us;  it  breaks  in,  a  rude  visitant, 
upon  the  fairy  garden  where  the  child  wan- 
ders in  a  dream,  no  less  surely  than  it  rules 
upon  the  field  of  battle,  or  sends  the  immor- 
tal war-god  whimpering  to  his  father;  and 
206 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

innocence,  no  more  than  philosophy,  can 
proted  us  from  this  sting.  As  for  taste, 
when  we  bear  in  mind  the  excesses  of  un- 
mitigated sugar  which  delight  a  youthful 
palate,  *Mt  is  surely  no  very  cynical  asper- 
ity "  to  think  taste  a  charader  of  the  maturer 
growth.  Smell  and  hearing  are  perhaps  more 
developed;  I  remember  many  scents,  many 
voices,  and  a  great  deal  of  spring  singing  in 
the  woods.  But  hearing  is  capable  of  vast  im- 
provement as  a  means  of  pleasure ;  and  there 
is  all  the  world  between  gaping  wonderment 
at  the  jargon  of  birds,  and  the  emotion  with 
which  a  man  listens  to  articulate  music. 

At  the  same  time,  and  step  by  step  with 
this  increase  in  the  definition  and  intensity 
of  what  we  feel  which  accompanies  our 
growing  age,  another  change  takes  place  in 
the  sphere  of  intelled,  by  which  all  things 
are  transformed  and  seen  through  theories 
and  associations  as  through  coloured  win- 
dows. We  make  to  ourselves  day  by  day, 
out  of  history,  and  gossip,  and  economical 
speculations,  and  God  knows  what,  a  me- 
dium in  which  we  walk  and  through  which 
we  look  abroad.  We  study  shop  windows 

207 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

with  other  eyes  than  in  our  childhood,  never 
to  wonder,  not  alwaysto  admire,  buttomake 
and  modify  our  little  incongruous  theories 
about  life.  It  is  no  longer  the  uniform  of  a 
soldier  that  arrests  our  attention;  but  per- 
haps the  flowing  carriage  of  a  woman,  or 
perhaps  a  countenance  that  has  been  vividly 
stamped  with  passion  and  carries  an  adven- 
turous story  written  in  its  lines.  The  pleas- 
ure of  surprise  is  passed  away ;  sugar-loaves 
and  water-carts  seem  mighty  tame  to  en- 
counter; and  we  walk  the  streets  to  make 
romances  and  to  sociologize.  Nor  must  we 
deny  that  agood  many  of  us  walk  them  solely 
for  the  purposes  of  transit  or  in  the  interest 
of  a  livelier  digestion.  These,  indeed,  may 
look  back  with  mingled  thoughts  upon  their 
childhood,  but  the  rest  are  in  a  better  case; 
they  know  more  than  when  they  were  chil- 
dren, they  understand  better,  their  desires 
and  sympathies  answer  more  nimbly  to  the 
provocation  of  the  senses,  and  their  minds 
are  brimming  with  interest  as  they  go  about 
the  world. 

According  to  my  contention,   this  is  a 
flight  to  which  children  cannot  rise.  They 
208 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

are  wheeled  in  perambulators  or  dragged 
about  by  nurses  in  a  pleasing  stupor.  A 
vague,  faint,  abiding  wonderment  possesses 
them.  Hereandthere  some  specially  remark- 
able circumstance,  such  as  a  water-cart  or  a 
guardsman,  fairly  penetrates  into  the  seat  of 
thought  and  calls  them,  for  half  a  moment, 
out  of  themselves;  and  you  may  see  them, 
still  towed  forward  sideways  by  the  inex- 
orable nurse  as  by  a  sort  of  destiny,  but 
still  staring  at  the  bright  objed  in  their 
wake.  It  may  be  some  minutes  before  an- 
other  such   moving   spedacle    reawakens 
them  to  the  world  in  which  they  dwell. 
For  other  children,  they  almost  invariably 
show  some  intelligent  sympathy.  * '  There  is 
a  fine  fellow  making  mud  pies,"  they  seem 
to  say;  "that   I  can  understand,  there  is 
some  sense  in  mud  pies."  But  the  doings  of 
their  elders,  unless  where  they  are  speak- 
ingly  piduresque    or    recommend   them- 
selves by  the  quality  of  being  easily  imitable, 
they  let  them  go  over  their  heads  (as  we  say) 
without  the  least  regard.  If  it  were  not  for 
this  perpetual  imitation,  we  should  be  tempt- 
ed to  fancy  they  despised  us  outright,  or  only 


209 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

considered  us  in  the  light  of  creatures  brutally 
strong  and  brutally  silly ;  among  whom  they 
condescended  to  dwell  in  obedience  like  a 
philosopher  at  a  barbarous  court.  At  times, 
indeed, they  display  an  arrogance  of  disregard 
that  is  truly  staggering.  Once,  when  I  was 
groaning  aloud  with  physical  pain,  a  young 
gentleman  came  into  the  room  and  non- 
chalantly inquired  if  I  had  seen  his  bow  and 
arrow.  He  made  no  account  of  my  groans, 
which  he  accepted,  as  he  had  to  accept  so 
much  else^  as  a  piece  of  the  inexplicable 
condu6l  of  his  elders ;  and  like  a  wise  young 
gentleman,  he  would  waste  no  wonder  on 
the  subject.  Those  elders,  who  care  so  little 
for  rational  enjoyment,  and  are  even  the 
enemies  of  rational  enjoyment  for  others,  he 
had  accepted  without  understanding  and 
without  complaint,  as  the  rest  of  us  accept 
the  scheme  of  the  universe. 

We  grown  people  can  tell  ourselves  a 
story,  give  and  take  strokes  until  the  buck- 
lers ring,  ride  far  and  fast,  marry,  fall,  and 
die;  all  the  while  sitting  quietly  by  the  fire 
or  lying  prone  in  bed.  This  is  exactly  what 
a  child  cannot  do,  or  does  not  do,  at  least, 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

when  he  can  find  anything  else.  He  works 
all  with  lay  figures  and  stage  properties. 
When  his  story  comes  to  the  fighting,  he 
must  rise,  get  something  by  way  of  a  sword 
and  have  a  set-to  with  a  piece  of  furniture, 
until  he  is  out  of  breath.  When  he  comes  to 
ride  with  the  king's  pardon,  he  must  be- 
stride a  chair,  which  he  will  so  hurry  and 
belabour  and  on  which  he  will  so  furiously 
demean  himself,  that  the  messenger  will 
arrive,  if  not  bloody  with  spurring,  at  least 
fiery  red  with  haste.  If  his  romance  involves 
an  accident  upon  a  cliff,  he  must  clamber  in 
person  about  the  chest  of  drawers  and  fall 
bodily  upon  the  carpet,  before  his  imagina- 
tion is  satisfied.  Lead  soldiers,  dolls,  all  toys, 
in  short,  are  in  the  same  category  and 
answer  the  same  end.  Nothing  can  stagger 
a  child's  faith;  he  accepts  the  clumsiest  sub- 
stitutes and  can  swallow  the  most  staring 
incongruities.  The  chair  he  has  just  been 
besieging  as  a  castle,  or  valiantly  cutting  to 
the  ground  as  a  dragon,  is  taken  away  for 
the  accommodation  of  a  morning  visitor, 
and  he  is  nothing  abashed;  he  can  skirmish 
by  the  hour  with  a  stationary  coal-scuttle  j 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

in  the  midst  of  thie  enchanted  pleasance,  he 
can  see,  without  sensible  shock,  the  gar- 
dener soberly  digging  potatoes  for  the  day's 
dinner.  He  can  make  abstradion  of  what- 
ever does  not  fit  into  his  fable;  and  he  puts 
his  eyes  into  his  pocket,  just  as  we  hold  our 
noses  in  an  unsavoury  lane.  And  so  it  is, 
that  although  the  ways  of  children  cross 
with  those  of  their  elders  in  a  hundred  places 
daily,  they  never  go  in  the  same  diredion 
nor  so  much  as  lie  in  the  same  element.  So 
may  the  telegraph  wires  intersed  the  line 
of  the  high-road,  or  so  might  a  landscape 
painter  and  a  bagman  visit  the  same  coun- 
try, and  yet  move  in  different  worlds. 

People  struck  with  these  spedacles,  cry 
aloud  about  the  power  of  imagination  in  the 
young.  Indeed  there  may  be  two  words  to 
that.  It  is,  in  some  ways,  but  a  pedestrian 
fancy  that  the  child  exhibits.  It  is  the  grown 
people  who  make  the  nursery  stories ;  all  the 
children  do,  is  jealously  to  preserve  the  text. 
One  out  of  a  dozen  reasons  why  Robinson 
Crusoe  should  be  so  popular  with  youth,  is 
that  it  hits  their  level  in  this  matter  to  a 
nicety;  Crusoe  was  always  at  makeshifts 


212 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

and  had,  in  so  many  words,  to  play  at  a 
great  variety  of  professions;  and  then  the 
book  is  all  about  tools,  and  there  is  nothing 
that  delights  a  child  so  much.  Hammers  and 
saws  belong  to  a  province  of  life  that  posi- 
tively calls  for  imitation.  The  juvenile  lyrical 
drama,  surely  of  the  most  ancient  Thespian 
model,  wherein  the  trades  of  mankind  are 
successively  simulated  to  the  running  bur- 
then ''  On  a  cold  and  frosty  morning,"  gives 
a  good  instance  of  the  artistic  taste  in  chil- 
dren. And  this  need  for  over  adion  and  lay 
figures  testifies  to  a  defe6t  in  the  child's  im- 
agination which  prevents  him  from  carrying 
out  his  novels  in  the  privacy  of  his  own 
heart.  He  does  not  yet  know  enough  of  the 
world  and  men.  His  experience  is  incom- 
plete. That  stage-wardrobe  and  scene-room 
that  we  call  the  memory  is  so  ill  provided, 
that  he  can  overtake  few  combinations  and 
body  out  few  stories,  to  his  own  content, 
without  some  external  aid.  He  is  at  the  ex- 
perimental stage;  he  is  not  sure  how  one 
would  feel  in  certain  circumstances;  to  make 
sure,  he  must  come  as  near  trying  it  as  his 
means  permit.  And  so  here  is  young  heroism 

213 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

with  a  wooden  sword,  and  mothers  pradice 
their  kind  vocation  over  a  bit  of  jointed 
stick.  It  may  be  laughable  enough  just  now ; 
but  it  is  these  same  people  and  these  same 
thoughts,  that  not  long  hence,  when  they 
are  on  the  theatre  of  life,  will  make  you 
weep  and  tremble.  For  children  think  very 
much  the  same  thoughts  and  dream  the 
same  dreams,  as  bearded  men  and  marriage- 
able women.  No  one  is  more  romantic. 
Fame  and  honour,  the  love  of  young  men 
and  the  love  of  mothers,  the  business  man's 
pleasure  in  method,  all  these  and  others  they 
anticipate  and  rehearse  in  their  play  hours. 
Upon  us,  who  are  further  advanced  and 
fairly  dealing  with  the  threads  of  destiny, 
they  only  glance  from  time  to  time  to  glean 
a  hint  for  their  own  mimetic  reprodudion. 
Two  children  playing  at  soldiers  are  far  more 
interesting  to  each  other  than  one  of  the 
scarlet  beings  whom  both  are  busy  imitat- 
ing. This  is  perhaps  the  greatest  oddity  of 
all.  ''Art  for  art"  is  their  motto;  and  the 
doings  of  grown  folk  are  only  interesting  as 
the  raw  material  for  play.  Not  Theophile 
Gautier,  not  Flaubert,  can  look  more  cal- 
214 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

lously  upon  life,  or  rate  the  reproduiftion 
more  highly  over  the  reality;  and  they  will 
parody  an  execution,  a  deathbed,  or  the 
funeral  of  the  young  man  of  Nain,  with  all 
the  cheerfulness  in  the  world. 

The  true  parallel  for  play  is  not  to  be  found, 
of  course,  in  conscious  art,  which,  though  it 
be  derived  from  play,  is  itself  an  abstrafl, 
impersonal  thing,  and  depends  largely  upon 
philosophical  interests  beyond  the  scope  of 
childhood.  It  is  when  we  make  castles  in  the 
air  and  personate  the  leading  charader  in 
our  own  romances,  that  we  return  to  the 
spirit  of  our  first  years.  Only,  there  are  sev- 
eral reasons  why  the  spirit  is  no  longer  so 
agreeable  to  indulge.  Nowadays,  when  we 
admit  this  personal  element  into  our  diva- 
gations we  are  apt  to  stir  up  uncomfortable 
and  sorrowful  memories,  and  remind  our- 
selves sharply  of  old  wounds.  Our  day- 
dreams can  no  longer  lie  all  in  the  air  like  a 
story  in  the  Arabian  Nights;  they  read  to  us 
rather  like  the  history  of  a  period  in  which 
we  ourselves  had  taken  part,  where  we  come 
across  many  unfortunate  passages  and  find 
our  own  conduct  smartly  reprimanded.  And 

ai5 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

then  the  child,  mind  you,  ads  his  parts.  He 
does  not  merely  repeat  them  to  himself;  he 
leaps,  he  runs,  and  sets  the  blood  agog  over 
all  his  body.  And  so  his  play  breathes  him; 
and  he  no  sooner  assumes  a  passion  than  he 
gives  it  vent.  Alas!  when  we  betake  our- 
selves to  our  intelledual  form  of  play,  sitting 
quietly  by  the  fire  or  lying  prone  in  bed,  we 
rouse  many  hot  feelings  for  which  we  can 
find  no  outlet.  Substitutes  are  not  acceptable 
to  the  mature  mind,  which  desires  the  thing 
itself;  and  even  to  rehearse  a  triumphant  dia- 
logue with  one's  enemy,  although  it  is  per- 
haps the  most  satisfactory  piece  of  play  still 
left  within  our  reach,  it  is  not  entirely  satis- 
fying, and  is  even  apt  to  lead  to  a  visit  and 
an  interview  which  may  be  the  reverse  of 
triumphant  after  all. 

In  the  child's  world  of  dim  sensation,  play 
is  all  in  all.  ''Making  believe"  is  the  gist  of 
his  whole  life,  and  he  cannot  so  much  as 
take  a  walk  except  in  charader.  I  could  not 
learn  my  alphabet  without  some  suitable 
mise-en-scene,  and  had  to  a<5l  a  business  man 
in  an  office  before  1  could  sit  down  to  my 
book.  Will  you  kindly  question  your  mem- 
216 


CHILD'S  PLAY 
ory,  and  find  out  how  much  you  did,  work 
or  pleasure,  in  good  faith  and  soberness,  and 
for  how  much  you  had  to  cheat  yourself  with 
some  invention?  I  remember,  as  though  it 
were  yesterday,  the  expansion  of  spirit,  the 
dignity  and  self-reliance,  that  came  with  a 
pair  of  mustachios  in  burnt  cork,  even  when 
there  was  none  to  see.  Children  are  even 
content  to  forego  what  we  call  the  realities, 
and  prefer  the  shadow  to  the  substance. 
When  they  might  be  speaking  intelligibly 
together,  they  chatter  senseless  gibberish  by 
the  hour,  and  are  quite  happy  because  they 
are  making  believe  to  speak  French.  I  have 
said  already  how  even  the  imperious  appe- 
tite of  hunger  suffers  itself  to  be  gulled  and 
led  by  the  nose  with  the  fag  end  of  an  old 
song.  And  it  goes  deeper  than  this:  when 
children  are  together  even  a  meal  is  felt  as 
an  interruption  in  the  business  of  life;  and 
they  must  find  some  imaginative  sanation, 
and  tell  themselves  some  sort  of  story,  to 
account  for,  to  colour,  to  render  entertain- 
ing, the  simple  processes  of  eating  and 
drinking.  What  wonderful  fancies  I  have 
heard  evolved  out  of  the  pattern  upon  tea- 

217 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

cups! — from  which  there  followed  a  code 
of  rules  and  a  whole  world  of  excitement, 
until  tea-drinking  began  to  take  rank  as  a 
game.  When  my  cousin  and  I  took  our  por- 
ridge of  a  morning,  we  had  a  device  to  en- 
liven the  course  of  the  meal.  He  ate  his  with 
sugar,  and  explained  it  to  be  a  country  con- 
tinually buried  under  snow.  I  took  mine  with 
milk,  and  explained  it  to  be  a  country  suf- 
fering gradual  inundation.  You  can  imagine 
us  exchanging  bulletins;  how  here  was  an 
island  still  unsubmerged,  here  a  valley  not 
yet  covered  with  snow;  what  inventions 
were  made;  how  his  population  lived  in 
cabins  on  perches  and  travelled  on  stilts,  and 
how  mine  was  always  in  boats;  how  the  in- 
terest grew  furious,  as  the  last  corner  of  safe 
ground  was  cut  off  on  all  sides  and  grew 
smaller  every  moment;  and  how,  in  fine, 
the  food  was  of  altogether  secondary  impor- 
tance, and  might  even  have  been  nauseous, 
so  long  as  we  seasoned  it  with  these  dreams. 
But  perhaps  the  most  exciting  moments  I 
ever  had  over  a  meal,  were  in  the  case  of 
calves'  feet  jelly.  It  was  hardly  possible  not 
to  believe — and  you  may  be  sure,  so  far  from 
218 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

trying,  I  did  all  I  could  to  favour  the  illusion 
— that  some  part  of  it  was  hollow,  and  that 
sooner  or  later  my  spoon  would  lay  open 
the  secret  tabernacle  of  the  golden  rock. 
There,  might  some  miniature  Red  Beard 
await  his  hour;  there,  might  one  find  the 
treasures  of  the  Forty  Thieves,  and  bewild- 
ered Cassim  beating  about  the  walls.  And 
so  1  quarried  on  slowly,  with  bated  breath, 
savouring  the  interest.  Believe  me,  I  had  little 
palate  left  for  the  jelly;  and  though  1  pre- 
ferred the  taste  when  I  took  cream  with  it,  I 
used  often  to  go  without,  because  the  cream 
dimmed  the  transparent  fradures. 

Even  with  games,  this  spirit  is  authorita- 
tive with  right-minded  children.  It  is  thus 
that  hide-and-seek  has  so  pre-eminent  a 
sovereignty,  for  it  is  the  wellspring  of  ro- 
mance, and  the  adions  and  the  excitement 
to  which  it  gives  rise  lend  themselves  to 
almost  any  sort  of  fable.  And  thus  cricket, 
which  is  a  mere  matter  of  dexterity,  palpably 
about  nothing  and  for  no  end,  often  fails  to 
satisfy  infantile  craving.  It  is  a  game,  if  you 
like,  but  not  a  game  of  play.  You  cannot  tell 
yourself  a  story  about  cricket;  and  the  adiv- 

319 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

ity  it  calls  forth  can  be  justified  on  no  rational 
theory.  Even  football,  although  it  admirably 
simulates  the  tug  and  the  ebb  and  flow  of 
battle,  has  presented  difficulties  to  the  mind 
of  young  sticklers  after  verisimilitude;  and  I 
knew  at  least  one  little  boy  who  was  mightily 
exercised  about  the  presence  of  the  ball,  and 
had  to  spirit  himself  up,  whenever  he  came 
to  play,  with  an  elaborate  story  of  enchant- 
ment, and  take  the  missile  as  a  sort  of  talis- 
man bandied  about  in  conflid  between  two 
Arabian  nations. 

To  think  of  such  a  frame  of  mind,  is  to 
become  disquieted  about  the  bringing  up  of 
children.  Surely  they  dwell  in  a  mythologi- 
cal epoch,  and  are  not  the  contemporaries  of 
their  parents.  What  can  they  think  of  them? 
what  can  they  make  of  these  bearded  or 
petticoated  giants  who  look  down  upon 
their  games .?  who  move  upon  a  cloudy 
Olympus,  following  unknown  designs  apart 
from  rational  enjoyment }  who  profess  the 
tenderest  solicitude  for  children,  and  yet 
every  now  and  again  reach  down  out  of  their 
altitude  and  terribly  vindicate  the  preroga- 
tives of  age  }  Off  goes  the  child,  corporally 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

smarting,  but  morally  rebellious.  Were  there 
ever  such  unthinkable  deities  as  parents?  I 
would  give  a  great  deal  to  know  what,  in 
nine  cases  out  of  ten,  is  the  child's  unvar- 
nished feeling.  A  sense  of  past  cajolery;  a 
sense  of  personal  attraction,  at  best  very 
feeble;  above  all,  I  should  imagine,  a  sense 
of  terror  for  the  untried  residue  of  mankind ; 
go  to  make  up  the  attra6lion  that  he  feels. 
No  wonder,  poor  little  heart,  with  such  a 
weltering  world  in  front  of  him,  if  he  clings 
to  the  hand  he  knows!  The  dread  irration- 
ality of  the  whole  affair,  as  it  seems  to  chil- 
dren, is  a  thing  we  are  all  too  ready  to  forget. 
"O,  why,"  I  remember  passionately  won- 
dering, *' why  can  we  not  all  be  happy  and 
devote  ourselves  to  play.^"  And  when  chil- 
dren do  philosophise,  I  believe  it  is  usually 
to  very  much  the  same  purpose. 

One  thing,  at  least,  comes  very  clearly  out 
of  these  considerations;  that  whatever  we 
are  to  expert  at  the  hands  of  children,  it 
should  not  be  any  peddling  exaditude  about 
matters  of  fad.  They  walk  in  a  vain  show, 
and  among  mists  and  rainbows;  they  are 
passionate  after  dreams  and  unconcerned 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

about  realities ;  speech  is  a  difficult  art  not 
wholly  learned ;  and  there  is  nothing  in  their 
own  tastes  or  purposes  to  teach  them  what 
we  mean  by  abstrad  truthfulness.  When  a 
bad  writer  is  inexad,  even  if  he  can  look 
back  on  half  a  century  of  years,  we  charge 
him  with  imcompetence  and  not  with  dis- 
honesty. And  why  not  extend  the  same  al- 
lowance to  imperfed  speakers?  Let  a  stock- 
broker be  dead  stupid  about  poetry,  or  a 
poet  inexaA  in  the  details  of  business,  and 
we  excuse  them  heartily  from  blame.  But 
show  us  a  miserable,  unbreeched,  human 
entity,  whose  whole  profession  it  is  to  take 
a  tub  for  a  fortified  town  and  a  shaving-brush 
for  the  deadly  stiletto,  and  who  passes  three- 
fourths  of  his  time  in  a  dream  and  the  rest 
in  open  self-deception,  and  we  exped  him 
to  be  as  nice  upon  a  matter  of  fa6t  as  a  scien- 
tific expert  bearing  evidence.  Upon  my 
heart,  I  think  it  less  than  decent.  You  do  not 
consider  how  little  the  child  sees,  or  how 
swift  he  is  to  weave  what  he  has  seen  into 
bewildering  fidion;  and  that  he  cares  no 
more  for  what  you  call  truth,  than  you  for 
a  gingerbread  dragoon. 


CHILD'S  PLAY 
I  am  reminded,  as  I  write,  that  the  child 
is  very  inquiring  as  to  the  precise  truth  of 
stories.  But  indeed  this  is  a  very  different 
matter,  and  one  bound  up  with  the  subjed 
of  play,  and  the  precise  amount  of  playful- 
ness, or  playability,  to  be  looked  for  in  the 
world.  Many  such  burning  questions  must 
arise  in  the  course  of  nursery  education. 
Among  the  fauna  of  this  planet,  which  al- 
ready embraces  the  pretty  soldier  and  the 
terrifying  Irish  beggarman,  is,  or  is  not,  the 
child  to  exped  a  Bluebeard  or  a  Cormoran? 
Is  he,  or  is  he  not,  to  look  out  for  magicians, 
kindly  and  potent.?  May  he,  or  may  he  not, 
reasonably  hope  to  be  cast  away  upon  a 
desert  island,  or  turned  to  such  diminutive 
proportions  that  he  can  live  on  equal  terms 
with  his  lead  soldiery,  and  go  a  cruise  in  his 
own  toy  schooner?  Surely  all  these  are  prac- 
tical questions  to  a  neophyte  entering  upon 
life  with  a  view  to  play.  Precision  upon  such 
a  point,  the  child  can  understand.  But  if  you 
merely  ask  him  of  his  past  behaviour,  as  to 
who  threw  such  a  stone,  for  instance,  or 
struck  such  and  such  a  match;  or  whether 
he  had  looked  into  a  parcel  or  gone  by  a  for- 

223 


CHILD'S  PLAY 

bidden  path, —  why,  he  can  see  no  moment 
in  the  inquiry,  and  it  is  ten  to  one,  he  has 
already  half  forgotten  and  half  bemused  him- 
self with  subsequent  imaginings. 

It  would  be  easy  to  leave  them  in  their 
native  cloudland,  where  they  figure  so  pret- 
tily— pretty  like  flowers  and  innocent  like 
dogs.  They  will  come  out  of  their  gardens 
soon  enough,  and  have  to  go  into  offices  and 
the  witness-box.  Spare  them  yet  a  while,  O 
conscientious  parent!  Let  them  doze  among 
their  playthings  yet  a  little!  for  who  knows 
what  a  rough,  warfaring  existence  lies  be- 
fore them  in  the  future .? 


224 


WALKING  TOURS 

[T  must  not  be  imagined  that  a 
walking  tour,  as  some  would  have 
us  fancy,  is  merely  a  better  or  worse 
way  of  seeing  the  country.  There  are  many 
ways  of  seeing  landscape  quite  as  good ;  and 
none  more  vivid,  in  spite  of  canting  dilet- 
tantes, than  from  a  railway  train.  But  land- 
scape on  a  walking  tour  is  quite  accessory. 
He  who  is  indeed  of  the  brotherhood  does 
not  voyage  in  quest  of  the  piduresque,  but 
of  certain  jolly  humours  —  of  the  hope  and 
spirit  with  which  the  march  begins  at  morn- 
ing, and  the  peace  and  spiritual  repletion  of 
the  evening's  rest.  He  cannot  tell  whether 
he  puts  his  knapsack  on,  or  takes  it  off,  with 
more  delight.  The  excitement  of  the  depar- 
ture puts  him  in  key  for  that  of  the  arrival. 
Whatever  he  does  is  not  only  a  reward  in 
itself,  but  will  be  further  rewarded  in  the 
sequel;  and  so  pleasure  leads  on  to  pleasure 
in  an  endless  chain.  It  is  this  that  so  few  can 

225 


WALKING  TOURS 

understand ;  they  will  either  be  always  loung- 
ing or  always  at  five  miles  an  hour;  they  do 
not  play  off  the  one  against  the  other,  pre- 
pare all  day  for  the  evening,  and  all  evening 
for  the  next  day.  And,  above  all,  it  is  here 
that  youroverwalker  fails  of  comprehension. 
His  heart  rises  against  those  who  drink  their 
curagoa  in  liqueur  glasses,  when  he  himself 
can  swill  it  in  a  brown  John.  He  will  not  be- 
lieve that  the  flavour  is  more  delicate  in  the 
smaller  dose.  He  will  not  believe  that  to 
walk  this  unconscionable  distance  is  merely 
to  stupefy  and  brutalise  himself,  and  come 
to  his  inn,  at  night,  with  a  sort  of  frost  on 
his  five  wits,  and  a  starless  night  of  dark- 
ness in  his  spirit.  Not  for  him  the  mild  lu- 
minous evening  of  the  temperate  walker! 
He  has  nothing  left  of  man  but  a  physical 
need  for  bedtime  and  a  double  nightcap ;  and 
even  his  pipe,  if  he  be  a  smoker,  will  be 
savourless  and  disenchanted.  It  is  the  fate  of 
such  an  one  to  take  twice  as  much  trouble 
as  is  needed  to  obtain  happiness,  and  miss 
the  happiness  in  the  end;  he  is  the  man  of 
the  proverb,  in  short,  who  goes  further  and 
fares  worse. 
226 


WALKING  TOURS 

Now,  to  be  properly  enjoyed,  a  walking 
tour  should  be  gone  upon  alone.  If  you  go 
in  a  company,  or  even  in  pairs,  it  is  no 
longer  a  walking  tour  in  anything  but  name ; 
it  is  something  else  and  more  in  the  nature 
of  a  picnic.  A  walking  tour  should  be  gone 
upon  alone,  because  freedom  is  of  the  es- 
sence; because  you  should  be  able  to  stop 
and  go  on,  and  follow  this  way  or  that,  as 
the  freak  takes  you;  and  because  you  must 
have  your  own  pace,  and  neither  trot  along- 
side a  champion  walker,  nor  mince  in  time 
with  a  girl.  And  then  you  must  be  open  to 
all  impressions  and  let  your  thoughts  take 
colour  from  what  you  see.  You  should  be  as 
a  pipe  for  any  wind  to  play  upon.  "  I  can- 
not seethe  wit,"  says  Hazlitt,  "of  walking 
and  talking  at  the  same  time.  When  1  am  in 
the  country  I  wish  to  vegetate  like  the  coun- 
try,"—  which  is  the  gist  of  all  that  can  be 
said  upon  the  matter.  There  should  be  no 
cackle  of  voices  at  your  elbow,  to  jar  on  the 
meditative  silence  of  the  morning.  And  so 
long  as  a  man  is  reasoning  he  cannot  sur- 
render himself  to  that  fine  intoxication  that 
comes  of  much  motion  in  the  open  air,  that 

227 


WALKING  TOURS 

begins  in  a  sort  of  dazzle  and  sluggishness 
of  the  brain,  and  ends  in  a  peace  that  passes 
comprehension. 

During  the  first  day  or  so  of  any  tour  there 
are  moments  of  bitterness,  when  the  travel- 
ler feels  more  than  coldly  towards  his  knap- 
sack, when  he  is  half  in  a  mind  to  throw  it 
bodily  over  the  hedge  and,  like  Christian  on 
a  similar  occasion,  ''give  three  leaps  and  go 
on  singing."And  yet  it  soon  acquires  a  prop- 
erty of  easiness.  It  becomes  magnetic;  the 
spirit  of  the  journey  enters  into  it.  And  no 
sooner  have  you  passed  the  straps  over  your 
shoulder  than  the  lees  of  sleep  are  cleared 
from  you,  you  pull  yourself  together  with  a 
shake,  and  fall  at  once  into  your  stride.  And 
surely,  of  all  possible  moods,  this,  in  which 
a  man  takes  the  road,  is  the  best.  Of  course, 
if  he  will  keep  thinking  of  his  anxieties,  if 
he  will  open  the  merchant  Abudah's  chest 
and  walk  arm-in-arm  with  the  hag — why, 
wherever  he  is,  and  whether  he  walk  fast  or 
slow,  the  chances  are  that  he  will  not  be 
happy.  Andso  much  the  more  shame  to  him- 
self! There  are  perhaps  thirty  men  setting 
forth  at  that  same  hour,  and  I  would  lay  a 
228 


WALKING  TOURS 

large  wager  there  is  not  another  dull  face 
among  the  thirty.  It  would  be  a  fine  thing 
to  follow,  in  a  coat  of  darkness,  one  after 
another  of  these  wayfarers,  some  summer 
morning,  for  the  first  few  miles  upon  the 
road.  This  one,  who  walks  fast,  with  a  keen 
look  in  his  eyes,  is  all  concentrated  in  his 
own  mind;  he  is  up  at  his  loom,  weaving 
and  weaving,  to  set  the  landscape  to  words. 
This  one  peers  about,  as  he  goes,  among  the 
grasses;  he  waits  by  the  canal  to  watch  the 
dragon-flies ;  he  leans  on  the  gate  of  the  pas- 
ture, and  cannot  look  enough  upon  the  com- 
placent kine.  And  here  comes  another,  talk- 
ing, laughing,  and  gesticulating  to  himself. 
His  face  changes  from  time  to  time,  as  indig- 
nation flashes  from  his  eyes  or  anger  clouds 
his  forehead.  He  is  composing  articles,  de- 
livering orations,  and  conducing  the  most 
impassioned  interviews,  by  the  way.  A  little 
farther  on,  and  it  is  as  like  as  not  he  will  be- 
gin to  sing.  And  well  for  him,  supposing  him 
to  be  no  great  master  in  that  art,  if  he  stum- 
ble across  no  stolid  peasant  at  a  corner;  for 
on  such  an  occasion,  I  scarcely  know  which 
is  the  more  troubled,  or  whether  it  is  worse 

229 


WALKING  TOURS 

to  suffer  the  confusion  of  your  troubadour, 
or  the  unfeigned  alarm  of  your  down.  A 
sedentary  population,  accustomed,  besides, 
to  the  strange  mechanical  bearing  of  the 
common  tramp,  can  in  no  wise  explain  to 
itself  the  gaiety  of  these  passers-by.  1  knew 
one  man  who  was  arrested  as  a  runaway 
lunatic,  because,  although  a  full-grown  per- 
son with  a  red  beard,  he  skipped  as  he  went 
like  a  child.  And  you  would  be  astonished  if 
I  were  to  tell  you  all  the  grave  and  learned 
heads  who  have  confessed  to  me  that,  when 
on  walking  tours,  they  sang — and  sang  very 
ill  —  and  had  a  pair  of  red  ears  when,  as 
described  above,  the  inauspicious  peasant 
plumped  into  their  arms  from  round  a  cor- 
ner. And  here,  lest  you  should  think  I  am 
exaggerating,  is  Hazlitt's  own  confession, 
from  his  essay  On  Going  a  Journey,  which 
is  so  good  that  there  should  be  a  tax  levied 
on  all  who  have  not  read  it:  — 

"Give  me  the  clear  blue  sky  over  my 
head,"  says  he,  *'  and  the  green  turf  beneath 
my  feet,  a  winding  road  before  me,  and  a 
three  hours'  march  to  dinner — and  then  to 
thinking!  It  is  hard  if  I  cannot  start  some 
230 


WALKING  TOURS 
game  on  these  lone  heaths.  I  laugh,  I  run,  I 
leap,  I  sing  for  joy." 

Bravo !  After  that  adventure  of  my  friend 
with  the  poHceman,  you  would  not  have 
cared,  would  you,  to  pubUsh  that  in  the  first 
person  ?  But  we  have  no  bravery  nowadays, 
and,  even  in  books,  must  all  pretend  to  be 
as  dull  and  foolish  as  our  neighbours.  It  was 
not  so  with  Hazlitt.  And  notice  how  learned 
he  is  (as,  indeed,  throughout  the  essay)  in 
the  theory  of  walking  tours.  He  is  none  of 
your  athletic  men  in  purple  stockings,  who 
walk  their  fifty  miles  a  day:  three  hours' 
march  is  his  ideal.  And  then  he  must  have 
a  winding  road,  the  epicure! 

Yet  there  is  one  thing  I  objefl  to  in  these 
words  of  his,  one  thing  in  the  great  master's 
pradice  that  seems  to  me  not  wholly  wise. 
I  do  not  approve  of  that  leaping  and  run- 
ning. Both  of  these  hurry  the  respiration; 
they  both  shake  up  the  brain  out  of  its  glori- 
ous open-air  confusion ;  and  they  both  break 
the  pace.  Uneven  walking  is  not  so  agree- 
able to  the  body,  and  it  distrads  and  irri- 
tates the  mind.  Whereas,  when  once  you 
have  fallen  into  an  equable  stride,  it  requires 

231 


WALKING  TOURS 

no  conscious  thought  from  you  to  keep  it 
up,  and  yet  it  prevents  you  from  thinking 
earnestly  of  anything  else.  Like  knitting, 
like  the  work  of  a  copying  clerk,  it  gradu- 
ally neutralises  and  sets  to  sleep  the  serious 
adivity  of  the  mind.  We  can  think  of  this 
or  that,  lightly  and  laughingly,  as  a  child 
thinks,  or  as  we  think  in  a  morning  doze; 
we  can  make  puns  or  puzzle  out  acrostics, 
and  trifle  in  a  thousand  ways  with  words 
and  rhymes;  but  when  it  comes  to  honest 
work,  when  we  come  to  gather  ourselves 
together  for  an  effort,  we  may  sound  the 
trumpet  as  loud  and  long  as  we  please;  the 
great  barons  of  the  mind  will  not  rally  to  the 
standard,  but  sit,  each  one,  at  home,  warm- 
ing his  hands  over  his  own  fire  and  brood- 
ing on  his  own  private  thought! 

In  the  course  of  a  day's  walk,  you  see, 
there  is  much  variance  in  the  mood.  From 
the  exhilaration  of  the  start,  to  the  happy 
phlegm  of  the  arrival,  the  change  is  certainly 
great.  As  the  day  goes  on,  the  traveller 
moves  from  the  one  extreme  towards  the 
other.  He  becomes  more  and  more  incor- 
porated with  the  material  landscape,  and  the 
232 


WALKING  TOURS 

open-air  drunkenness  grows  upon  him  with 
great  strides,  until  he  posts  along  the  road, 
and  sees  everything  about  him,  as  in  a  cheer- 
ful dream.  The  first  is  certainly  brighter,  but 
the  second  stage  is  the  more  peaceful.  A 
man  does  not  make  so  many  articles  to- 
wards the  end,  nor  does  he  laugh  aloud; 
but  the  purely  animal  pleasures,  the  sense  of 
physical  wellbeing,  the  delight  of  every  in- 
halation, of  every  time  the  muscles  tighten 
down  the  thigh,  console  him  for  the  ab- 
sence of  the  others,  and  bring  him  to  his 
destination  still  content. 

Nor  must  1  forget  to  say  a  word  on  biv- 
ouacs. You  come  to  a  milestone  on  a  hill,  or 
some  place  where  deep  ways  meet  under 
trees;  and  off  goes  the  knapsack,  and  down 
you  sit  to  smoke  a  pipe  in  the  shade.  You 
sink  into  yourself,  and  the  birds  come  round 
and  look  at  you;  and  your  smoke  dissipates 
upon  the  afternoon  under  the  blue  dome  of 
heaven;  and  the  sun  lies  warm  upon  your 
feet,  and  the  cool  air  visits  your  neck  and 
turns  aside  your  open  shirt.  If  you  are  not 
happy,  you  must  have  an  evil  conscience. 
You  may  dally  as  long  as  you  like  by  the 

233 


WALKING  TOURS 

roadside.  It  is  almost  as  if  the  millennium 
were  arrived,  when  we  shall  throw  our 
clocks  and  watches  over  the  housetop,  and 
remember  time  and  seasons  no  more.  Not 
to  keep  hours  for  a  lifetime  is,  I  was  going 
to  say,  to  live  for  ever.  You  have  no  idea, 
unless  you  have  tried  it,  how  endlessly  long 
is  a  summer's  day,  that  you  measure  out 
only  by  hunger,  and  bring  to  an  end  only 
when  you  are  drowsy.  I  know  a  village 
where  there  are  hardly  any  clocks,  where 
no  one  knows  more  of  the  days  of  the  week 
than  by  a  sort  of  instind  for  the  fete  on  Sun- 
days, and  where  only  one  person  can  tell 
you  the  day  of  the  month,  and  she  is  gen- 
erally wrong;  and  if  people  were  aware  how 
slow  Time  journeyed  in  that  village,  and 
what  armfuls  of  spare  hours  he  gives,  over 
and  above  the  bargain,  to  its  wise  inhabi- 
tants, 1  believe  there  would  be  a  stampede 
out  of  London,  Liverpool,  Paris,  and  a  va- 
riety of  large  towns,  where  the  clocks  lose 
their  heads,  and  shake  the  hours  out  each 
one  faster  than  the  other,  as  though  they 
were  all  in  a  wager.  And  all  these  foolish 
pilgrims  would  each  bring  his  own  misery 
234 


WALKING  TOURS 

along  with  him,  in  a  watch-pocket!  It 
is  to  be  noticed,  there  were  no  clocks  and 
watches  in  the  much-vaunted  days  before 
the  flood.  It  follows,  of  course,  there  were 
no  appointments,  and  punAuality  was  not 
yet  thought  upon.  "Though  ye  take  from  a 
covetous  man  all  his  treasure,"  says  Milton, 
"he  has  yet  one  jewel  left;  ye  cannot  de- 
prive him  of  his  covetousness."  And  so  I 
would  say  of  a  modern  man  of  business, 
you  may  do  what  you  will  for  him,  put  him 
in  Eden,  give  him  the  elixir  of  life  —  he  has 
still  a  flaw  at  heart,  he  still  has  his  business 
habits.  Now,  there  is  no  time  when  busi- 
ness habits  are  more  mitigated  than  on  a 
walking  tour.  And  so,  during  these  halts,  as 
I  say,  you  will  feel  almost  free. 

But  it  is  at  night,  and  after  dinner,  that  the 
best  hour  comes.  There  are  no  such  pipes  to 
be  smoked  as  those  that  follow  a  good  day's 
march ;  the  flavour  of  the  tobacco  is  a  thing 
to  be  remembered,  it  is  so  dry  and  aromatic, 
so  full  and  so  fine.  If  you  wind  up  the  eve- 
ning with  grog,  you  will  own  there  was 
never  such  grog;  at  every  sip  a  jocund 
tranquillity  spreads  about  your  limbs,  and 


WALKING  TOURS 

sits  easily  in  your  heart.  If  you  read  a  book 
—  and  you  will  never  do  so  save  by  fits 
and  starts — you  find  the  language  strangely 
racy  and  harmonious;  words  take  a  new 
meaning;  single  sentences  possess  the  ear 
for  half  an  hour  together;  and  the  writer 
endears  himself  to  you,  at  every  page,  by 
the  nicest  coincidence  of  sentiment.  It  seems 
as  if  it  were  a  book  you  had  written  your- 
self in  a  dream.  To  all  we  have  read  on  such 
occasions  we  look  back  with  special  favour. 
"It  was  on  the  loth  of  April,  1798,"  says 
Hazlitt,  with  amorous  precision,  "  that  I 
sat  down  to  a  volume  of  the  new  Heloise, 
at  the  Inn  at  Llangollen,  over  a  bottle  of 
sherry  and  a  cold  chicken."  I  should  wish  to 
quote  more,  for  though  we  are  mighty  fine 
fellows  nowadays,  we  cannot  write  like 
Hazlitt.  And,  talking  of  that,  a  volume  of 
Hazlitt's  essays  would  be  a  capital  pocket- 
book  on  such  a  journey ;  so  would  a  volume 
of  Heine's  songs;  and  for  Tristram  Shandy 
I  can  pledge  a  fair  experience. 

If  the  evening  be  fine  and  warm,  there  is 
nothing  better  in  life  than  to  lounge  before 
the  inn  door  in  the  sunset,  or  lean  over  the 
236 


WALKING  TOURS 

parapet  of  the  bridge,  to  watch  the  weeds, 
and  the  quick  fishes.  It  is  then,  if  ever,  that 
you  taste  JoviaUty  to  the  full  significance  of 
that  audacious  word.  Your  muscles  are  so 
agreeably  slack,  you  feel  so  clean  and  so 
strong  and  so  idle,  that  whether  you  move 
or  sit  still,  whatever  you  do  is  done  with 
pride  and  a  kingly  sort  of  pleasure.  You 
fall  in  talk  with  any  one,  wise  or  foolish, 
drunk  or  sober.  And  it  seems  as  if  a  hot 
walk  purged  you,  more  than  ofanythingelse, 
of  all  narrowness  and  pride,  and  left  curios- 
ity to  play  its  part  freely,  as  in  a  child  or  a 
man  of  science.  You  lay  aside  all  your  own 
hobbies,  to  watch  provincial  humours  de- 
velop themselves  before  you,  now  as  a  laugh- 
able farce,  and  now  grave  and  beautiful  like 
an  old  tale. 

Or  perhaps  you  are  left  to  your  own  com- 
pany for  the  night,  and  surly  weather  im- 
prisons you  by  the  fire.  You  may  remem- 
ber how  Burns,  numbering  past  pleasures, 
dwells  upon  the  hours  when  he  has  been 
''happy  thinking."  It  is  a  phrase  that  may 
well  perplex  a  poor  modern,  girt  about  on 
every  side  by  clocks  and  chimes,  and  haunt- 

237 


WALKING  TOURS 

ed,  even  at  night,  by  flaming  dial-plates.  For 
we  are  all  so  busy,  and  have  so  many  far- 
off  projeds  to  realise,  and  castles  in  the  fire  to 
turn  into  solid  habitable  mansions  on  a  gravel 
soil,  that  we  can  find  no  time  for  pleasure 
trips  into  the  Land  of  Thought  and  among 
the  Hills  of  Vanity.  Changed  times,  indeed, 
when  we  must  sit  all  night,  beside  the  fire, 
with  folded  hands;  and  a  changed  world 
for  most  of  us,  when  we  find  we  can  pass 
the  hours  without  discontent,  and  be  happy 
thinking.  We  are  in  such  haste  to  be  doing, 
to  be  writing,  to  be  gathering  gear,  to  make 
our  voice  audible  a  moment  in  the  derisive 
silence  of  eternity,  that  we  forget  that  one 
thing,  of  which  these  are  but  the  parts  — 
namely,  to  live.  We  fall  in  love,  we  drink 
hard,  we  run  to  and  fro  upon  the  earth  like 
Irightened  sheep.  And  now  you  are  to  ask 
yourself  if,  when  all  is  done,  you  would  not 
have  been  better  to  sit  by  the  fire  at  home, 
and  be  happy  thinking.  To  sit  still  and  con- 
template,—  to  rememberthe  faces  of  women 
without  desire,  to  be  pleased  by  the  great 
deeds  of  men  without  envy,  to  be  everything 
and  every  wherein  sympathy,andyetcontent 
238 


WALKING  TOURS 

to  remain  where  and  what  you  are  —  is  not 
this  to  know  both  wisdom  and  virtue,  and 
to  dwell  with  happiness?  After  all,  it  is  not 
they  who  carry  flags,  but  they  who  look  up- 
on it  from  a  private  chamber,  who  have  the 
fun  of  the  procession.  And  once  you  are  at 
that,  you  are  in  the  very  humour  of  all  social 
heresy.  It  is  no  time  for  shuffling,  or  for  big, 
empty  words.  If  you  ask  yourself  what  you 
mean  by  fame,  riches,  or  learning,  the  an- 
swer is  far  to  seek ;  and  you  go  back  into  that 
kingdom  of  light  imaginations,  which  seem 
so  vain  in  the  eyes  of  Philistines  perspiring 
afterwealth,  and  so  momentous  to  those  who 
are  stricken  with  the  disproportions  of  the 
world,  and,  in  the  face  of  the  gigantic  stars, 
cannot  stop  to  split  differences  between  two 
degrees  of  the  infmitesimally  small,  such  as 
a  tobacco  pipe  or  the  Roman  Empire,  a  mil- 
lion of  money  or  a  fiddlestick's  end. 

You  lean  from  the  window,  your  last  pipe 
reeking  whitely  into  the  darkness,  your  body 
full  of  delicious  pains,  your  mind  enthroned 
in  the  seventh  circle  of  content;  when  sud- 
denly the  mood  changes,  the  weather-cock 
goes  about,  and  you  ask  yourself  one  ques- 

239 


WALKING  TOURS 

tion  more:  whether,  for  the  interval,  you 
havebeenthe  wisest  philosopheror  the  most 
egregious  of  donkeys?  Human  experience  is 
not  yet  able  to  reply ;  but  at  least  you  have 
had  a  fine  moment,  and  looked  down  upon 
all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth.  And  whether 
it  was  wise  or  foolish,  to-morrow's  travel  will 
carry  you,  body  and  mind,  into  some  differ- 
ent parish  of  the  infinite. 


240 


PAN'S  PIPES 

'HE  world  in  which  we  live  has  been 
variously  said  and  sung  by  the  most 
ingenious  poets  and  philosophers: 
these  reducing  it  to  formulae  and  chemical 
ingredients,  those  striking  the  lyre  in  high- 
sounding  measures  for  the  handiwork  of 
God.  What  experience  supplies  is  of  a  min- 
gled tissue,  and  the  choosing  mind  has  much 
to  reje<5l  before  it  can  get  together  the  ma- 
terials of  a  theory.  Dew  and  thunder,  destroy- 
ing Atilla  and  the  Spring  lambkins,  belongta 
an  order  of  contrasts  which  no  repetition  can 
assimilate.  There  is  an  uncouth,  outlandish 
strain  throughout  the  web  of  the  world,  as 
from  a  vexatious  planet  in  the  house  of  life. 
Things  are  not  congruous  and  wear  strange 
disguises:  the  consummate  flower  is  fos- 
tered out  of  dung,  and  after  nourishing  itself 
awhile  with  heaven's  delicate  distillations, 
decays  again  into  indistinguishable  soil ;  and 
with  Caesar's  ashes,  Hamlet  tells  us,  the  ur- 

241 


PAN'S  PIPES 

chins  make  dirt  pies  and  filthily  besmear  their 
countenance.  Nay,  the  kindly  shine  of  sum- 
mer, when  tracked  home  with  the  scientific 
spyglass,  is  found  to  issue  from  the  most 
portentous  nightmare  of  the  universe — the 
great,  conflagrant  sun:  a  world  of  hell's 
squibs,  tumultuary,  roaring  aloud,  inimical 
to  life.  The  sun  itself  is  enough  to  disgust  a 
human  being  of  the  scene  which  he  inhabits ; 
and  you  would  not  fancy  there  was  a  green 
or  habitable  spot  in  a  universe  thus  awfully 
lighted  up.  And  yet  it  is  by  the  blaze  of  such 
a  conflagration,  to  which  the  fire  of  Rome 
was  but  a  spark,  that  we  do  all  our  fiddling, 
and  hold  domestic  tea-parties  at  the  arbour 
door. 

The  Greeks  figured  Pan,  the  god  of  Nature, 
now  terribly  stamping  his  foot,  so  that  armies 
were  dispersed;  now  by  the  woodside  on  a 
summer  noon  trolling  on  his  pipe  until  he 
charmed  the  hearts  of  upland  ploughmen. 
And  the  Greeks,  in  so  figuring,  uttered  the 
last  word  of  human  experience.  To  certain 
smoke-dried  spirits  matter  and  motion  and 
elastic  aethers,  and  the  hypothesis  of  this  or 
that  other  spedacled  professor,  tell  a  speak- 
242 


PAN'S  PIPES 

ing  story;  but  for  youth  and  all  du6tile  and 
congenial  minds,  Pan  is  not  dead,  but  of  all 
the  classic  hierarchy  alone  survives  in  tri- 
umph; goat-footed,  with  a  gleeful  and  an 
angry  look,  the  type  of  the  shaggy  world: 
and  in  every  wood,  if  you  go  with  a  spirit 
properly  prepared,  you  shall  hear  the  note 
of  his  pipe. 

For  it  is  a  shaggy  world,  and  yet  studded 
with  gardens;  where  the  salt  and  tumbling 
sea  receives  clear  rivers  running  from  among 
reeds  and  lilies ;  fruitful  and  austere ;  a  rustic 
world;  sunshiny,  lewd,  and  cruel.  What  is 
it  the  birds  sing  among  the  trees  in  pairing- 
time  ?  What  means  the  sound  of  the  rain 
falling  far  and  wide  upon  the  leafy  forest  i* 
To  what  tune  does  the  fisherman  whistle, 
as  he  hauls  in  his  net  at  morning,  and  the 
bright  fish  are  heaped  inside  the  boat  ?  These 
are  all  airs  upon  Pan's  pipe;  he  it  was  who 
gave  them  breath  in  the  exultation  of  his 
heart,  and  gleefully  modulated  their  outflow 
with  his  lips  and  fingers.  The  coarse  mirth 
of  herdsmen,  shaking  the  dells  with  laughter 
and  striking  out  high  echoes  from  the  rock; 
the  tune  of  moving  feet  in  the  lamplit  city, 

243 


PAN'S  PIPES 

-or  on  the  smooth  ballroom  floor:  the  hooves 
of  many  horses,  beating  the  wide  pastures 
in  alarm;  the  song  of  hurrying  rivers;  the 
colour  of  clear  skies;  and  smiles  and  the  live 
touch  of  hands;  and  the  voice  of  things,  and 
their  significant  look,  and  the  renovating  in- 
fluence  they  breathe  forth  —  these  are  his 
joyful  measures,  to  which  the  whole  earth 
treads  in  choral  harmony.  To  this  music  the 
young  lambs  bound  as  to  a  tabor,  and  the 
London  shop-girl  skips  rudely  in  the  dance. 
For  it  puts  a  spirit  of  gladness  in  all  hearts; 
and  to  look  on  the  happy  side  of  nature  is 
common,  intheirhours,to  all  created  things. 
Some  are  vocal  under  a  good  influence,  are 
pleasing  whenever  they  are  pleased,  and 
hand  on  their  happiness  to  others,  as  a  child 
who,  looking  upon  lovely  things,  looks 
lovely.  Some  leap  to  the  strains  with  unapt 
foot,  and  make  a  halting  figure  in  the  uni- 
versal dance.  And  some,  like  sour  spectators 
at  the  play,  receive  the  music  into  their 
hearts  with  an  unmoved  countenance,  and 
walk  like  strangers  through  the  general  re- 
joicing. But  let  him  feign  never  so  carefully, 
there  is  not  a  man  but  has  his  pulses  shaken 
244 


PAN'S  PIPES 

when  Pan  trolls  out  a  stave  of  ecstasy  and 
sets  the  world  a-singing. 

Alas  if  that  were  all!  But  oftentimes  the 
air  is  changed;  and  in  the  screech  of  the 
night  wind,  chasing  navies,  subverting  the 
tall  ships  and  the  rooted  cedar  of  the  hills; 
in  the  random  deadly  levin  or  the  fury  of 
headlong  floods,  we  recognize  the  "dread 
foundation  "  of  life  and  the  anger  in  Pan's 
heart.  Earth  wages  open  war  against  her 
children,  and  under  her  softest  touch  hides 
treacherous  claws.  The  cool  waters  invite 
us  in  to  drown;  the  domestic  hearth  burns 
up  in  the  hour  of  sleep,  and  makes  an  end 
of  all.  Everything  is  good  or  bad,  helpful  or 
deadly,  not  in  itself,  but  by  its  circumstances. 
For  a  few  bright  days  in  England  the  hurri- 
cane must  break  forth  and  the  North  Sea  pay 
a  toll  of  populous  ships.  And  when  the  uni- 
versal music  has  led  lovers  into  the  paths  of 
dalliance,  confident  of  Nature's  sympathy, 
suddenly  the  air  shifts  into  a  minor,  and 
death  makes  a  clutch  from  his  ambuscade 
below  the  bed  of  marriage.  For  death  is 
given  in  a  kiss;  the  dearest  kindnesses  are 
fatal;  and  into  this  life,   where  one  thing 

245 


PAN'S  PIPES 

preys  upon  another,  the  child  too  often 
makes  its  entrance  from  the  mother's  corpse. 
It  is  no  wonder,  with  so  traitorous  a  scheme 
of  things,  if  the  wise  people  who  created 
for  us  the  idea  of  Pan  thought  that  of  all 
fears  the  fear  of  him  was  the  most  terrible, 
since  it  embraces  all.  And  still  we  preserve 
the  phrase :  a  panic  terror.  To  reckon  dangers 
too  curiously,  to  hearken  too  intently  for  the 
threat  that  runs  through  all  the  winning 
music  of  the  world,  to  hold  back  the  hand 
from  the  rose  because  of  the  thorn,  and  from 
life  because  of  death :  this  it  is  to  be  afraid  of 
Pan.  Highly  respedable  citizens  who  flee 
life's  pleasures  and  responsibilities  and  keep, 
with  upright  hat,  upon  the  midway  of  cus- 
tom, avoiding  the  right  hand  and  the  left, 
the  ecstasies  and  the  agonies,  how  surprised 
they  would  be  if  they  could  hear  their  atti- 
tude mythologically  expressed,  and  knew 
themselves  as  tooth-chattering  ones,  who 
flee  from  Nature  because  they  fear  the  hand 
of  Nature's  God!  Shrilly  sound  Pan's  pipes; 
and  behold  the  banker  instantly  concealed 
in  the  bank  parlour!  For  to  distrust  one's 
impulses  is  to  be  recreant  to  Pan. 
246 


PAN'S  PIPES 

There  are  moments  when  the  mind  re- 
fuses to  be  satisfied  with  evolution,  and  de- 
mands a  ruddier  presentation  of  the  sum  of 
man's  experience.  Sometimes  the  mood  is 
brought  about  by  laughter  at  the  humorous 
side  of  life,  as  when,  abstracting  ourselves 
from  earth,  we  imagine  people  plodding  on 
foot,  or  seated  in  ships  and  speedy  trains, 
with  the  planet  all  the  while  whirling  in  the 
opposite  diredion,  so  that,  for  all  their  hurry, 
they  travel  back-foremost  through  the  uni- 
verse of  space.  Sometimes  it  comes  by  the 
spirit  of  delight,  and  sometimes  by  the  spirit 
of  terror.  At  least,  there  will  always  be  hours 
when  we  refuse  to  be  put  off  by  the  feint 
of  explanation,  nicknamed  science;  and  de- 
mand instead  some  palpitating  image  of  our 
estate,  that  shall  represent  the  troubled  and 
uncertain  element  in  which  we  dwell,  and 
satisfy  reason  by  the  means  of  art.  Science 
writes  of  the  world  as  if  with  the  cold  finger 
of  a  starfish;  it  is  all  true;  but  what  is  it 
when  compared  to  the  reality  of  which  it 
discourses?  where  hearts  beat  high  in  April, 
and  death  strikes,  and  hills  totter  in  the 
earthquake,  and  there  is  a  glamour  over  all 

347 


PAN'S  PIPES 

the  objedls  of  sight,  and  a  thrill  in  all  noises 
for  the  ear,  and  Romance  herself  has  made 
her  dwelling  among  men?  So  we  come 
back  to  the  old  myth,  and  hear  the  goat- 
footed  piper  making  the  music  which  is  it- 
self the  charm  and  terror  of  things;  and 
when  a  glen  invites  our  visiting  footsteps, 
fancy  that  Pan  leads  us  thither  with  a  gracious 
tremolo;  or  when  our  hearts  quail  at  the 
thunder  of  the  catarad,  tell  ourselves  that  he 
has  stamped  his  hoof  in  the  nigh  thicket. 


348 


A  PLEA  FOR  GAS  LAMPS 

rITIESgiven,  the  problem  was  tolight 
them.  How  to  condud  individual 
citizens  about  the  burgess-warren, 
when  once  heaven  had  withdrawn  its  lead- 
ing luminary  ?  or — since  we  live  in  a  scien- 
tific age — when  once  our  spinning  planet 
has  turned  its  back  upon  the  sun  ?  The 
moon,  from  time  to  time,  was  doubtless 
very  helpful;  the  stars  had  a  cheery  look 
among  the  chimney-pots;  and  a  cresset  here 
and  there,  on  church  or  citadel,  produced  a 
fine  pictorial  effe6t,  and,  in  places  where  the 
ground  lay  unevenly,  held  out  the  right  hand 
of  condu(5l  to  the  benighted.  But  sun,  moon, 
and  stars  abstraded  or  concealed,  the  night- 
faring  inhabitant  had  to  fall  back — we  speak 
on  the  authority  of  old  prints  —  upon  stable 
lanthorns,  two  stories  in  height.  Many  holes, 
drilled  in  the  conical  turret-roof  of  this  vaga- 
bond Pharos,  let  up  spouts  of  dazzlement 
into  the  bearer's  eyes;  and  as  he  paced  forth 

249 


A  PLEA  FOR  GAS  LAMPS 

in  the  ghostly  darkness,  carrying  his  own 
sun  by  a  ring  about  his  finger,  day  and 
night  swung  to  and  fro  and  up  and  down 
about  his  footsteps.  Blackness  haunted  his 
path ;  he  was  beleaguered  by  goblins  as  he 
went;  and,  curfew  being  struck,  he  found 
no  light  but  that  he  travelled  in  throughout 
the  township. 

Closely  following  on  this  epoch  of  migra- 
tory lanthorns  in  a  world  of  extinction,  came 
the  era  of  oil-lights,  hard  to  kindle,  easy  to 
extinguish,  pale  and  wavering  in  the  hour 
of  their  endurance.  Rudely  puffed  the  winds 
of  heaven;  roguishly  clomb  up  the  all-de- 
strudive  urchin ;  and,  lo !  in  a  moment  night 
re-established  her  void  empire,  and  the  cit 
groped  along  the  wall,  suppered  but  bedless, 
occult  from  guidance,  and  sorrily  wading 
in  the  kennels.  As  if  gamesome  winds  and 
gamesome  youths  were  not  sufficient,  it 
was  the  habit  to  sling  these  feeble  luminaries 
from  house  to  house  above  the  fairway! 
There,  on  invisible  cordage,  let  them  swing! 
And  suppose  some  crane-necked  general  to 
go  speeding  by  on  a  tall  charger,  spurring 
the  destiny  of  nations,  red-hot  in  expedition. 
250 


A  PLEA  FOR  GAS  LAMPS 
there  xvould  indubitably  be  some  effusion  of 
military  blood,  and  oaths,  and  a  certain  crash 
of  glass;  and  while  the  chieftain  rode  for- 
ward with  a  purple  coxcomb,  the  street 
would  be  left  to  original  darkness,  unpiloted, 
unvoyageable,  a  province  of  the  desert  night. 

The  conservative,  looking  before  and 
after,  draws  from  each  contemplation  the 
matter  for  content.  Out  of  the  age  of  gas 
lamps  he  glances  back  slightingly  at  the 
mirk  and  ghmmer  in  which  his  ancestors 
wandered;  his  heart  waxes  jocund  at  the 
contrast;  nor  do  his  lips  refrain  from  a  stave, 
in  the  highest  style  of  poetry,  lauding  pro- 
gress and  the  golden  mean.  When  gas  first 
spread  along  a  city,  mapping  it  forth  about 
evenfall  for  the  eye  of  observant  birds,  a  new 
age  had  begun  for  sociality  and  corporate 
pleasure-seeking,  and  begun  with  proper 
circumstance,  becoming  its  own  birthright. 
The  work  of  Prometheus  had  advanced  by 
another  stride.  Mankind  and  its  supper  par- 
ties were  no  longer  at  the  mercy  of  a  few 
miles  of  sea-fog ;  sundown  no  longeremptied 
the  promenade;  and  the  day  was  length- 
ened out  to  every  man's  fancy.  The  city-folk 

251 


A  PLEA  FOR  GAS  LAMPS 

had  stars  of  their  own;  biddable,  domesti- 
cated stars. 

It  is  true  that  these  were  not  so  steady, 
nor  yet  so  dear,  as  their  originals;  nor  in- 
deed was  their  lustre  so  elegant  as  that  of 
the  best  wax  candles.  But  then  the  gas 
stars,  being  nearer  at  hand,  were  more  prac- 
tically eificacious  than  Jupiter  himself.  It  is 
true,  again,  that  they  did  not  unfold  their 
rays  with  the  appropriate  spontaneity  of  the 
planets,  coming  out  along  the  firmament 
one  after  another,  as  the  need  arises.  But  the 
lampHghters  took  to  their  heels  every  eve- 
ning, and  ran  with  a  good  heart.  It  was 
pretty  to  see  man  thus  emulating  the  pundu- 
ality  of  heaven's  orbs ;  and  though  perfedion 
was  not  absolutely  reached,  and  now  and 
then  an  individual  may  have  been  knocked 
on  the  head  by  the  ladder  of  the  flying  func- 
tionary, yet  people  commended  his  zeal  in 
a  proverb,  and  taught  their  children  to  say, 
''God  bless  the  lamplighter! "  And  since 
his  passage  was  a  piece  of  the  day's  pro- 
gramme, the  children  were  well  pleased  to 
repeat  the  benedidion,  not,  of  course,  in  so 
many  words,  which  would  have  been  im- 
252 


A  PLEA  FOR  GAS  LAMPS 

proper,  but  in  some  chaste  circumlocution, 
suitable  for  infant  lips. 

God  bless  him,  indeed!  For  the  term  of 
his  twilight  dihgence  is  near  at  hand;  and 
for  not  much  longer  shall  we  watch  him 
speeding  up  the  street  and,  at  measured  in- 
tervals, knocking  another  luminous  hole 
into  the  dusk.  The  Greeks  would  have  made 
a  noble  myth  of  such  an  one;  how  he  dis- 
tributed starlight,  and,  as  soon  as  the  need 
was  over,  re-colleded  it ;  and  the  little  bull's- 
eye,  which  was  his  instrument,  and  held 
enough  fire  to  kindle  a  whole  parish,  would 
have  been  fitly  commemorated  in  the  legend. 
Now,  like  all  heroic  tasks,  his  labours  draw 
towards  apotheosis,  and  in  the  light  of  vic- 
tory himself  shall  disappear.  For  another  ad- 
vance has  been  eflfeded.  Our  tame  stars  are 
to  come  out  in  future,  not  one  by  one,  but 
all  in  a  body  and  at  once.  A  sedate  ele6tri- 
cian  somewhere  in  a  back  office  touches  a 
spring  —  and  behold!  from  one  end  to  an- 
other of  the  city,  from  east  to  west,  from  the 
Alexandra  to  the  Crystal  Palace,  there  is 
light!  Fiat  Lux,  says  the  sedate  eledrician. 
What  a  spedacle,  on  some  clear,  dark  night- 

2^3 


A  PLEA  FOR  GAS  LAMPS 

fall,  from  the  edge  of  Hampstead  Hill,  when 
in  a  moment,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  the 
design  of  the  monstrous  city  flashes  into 
vision  —  a  glittering  hieroglyph  many  square 
miles  in  extent;  and  when,  to  borrow  and 
debase  an  image,  all  the  evening  street- 
lamps  burst  together  into  song!  Such  is  the 
spedacle  of  the  future,  preluded  the  other 
day  by  the  experiment  in  Pall  Mall.  Star-rise 
by  eledricity,  the  most  romantic  flight  of 
civilisation ;  the  compensatory  benefit  for  an 
innumerable  array  of  factories  and  bankers' 
clerks.  To  the  artistic  spirit  exercised  about 
Thirlmere,  here  is  a  crumb  of  consolation; 
consolatory  at  least,  to  such  of  them  as  look 
out  upon  the  world  through  seeing  eyes, 
and  contentedly  accept  beauty  where  it 
comes. 

But  the  conservative,  while  lauding  pro- 
gress, is  ever  timid  of  innovation;  his  is  the 
hand  upheld  to  counsel  pause ;  his  is  the  sig- 
nal advising  slow  advance.  The  word  elec- 
tricity now  sounds  the  note  of  danger.  In 
Paris,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Passage  des 
Princes,  in  the  place  before  the  Opera  por- 
tico, and  in  the  Rue  Drouot  at  the  Figaro 
254 


A  PLEA  FOR  GAS  LAMPS 

office,  a  new  sort  of  urban  star  now  shines 
out  nightly,  horrible,  unearthly,  obnoxious 
to  the  human  eye;  a  lamp  for  a  nightmare! 
Such  a  light  as  this  should  shine  only  on 
murders  and  public  crime,  or  along  the 
corridors  of  lunatic  asylums,  a  horror  to 
heighten  horror.  To  look  at  it  only  once  is 
to  fall  in  love  with  gas,  which  gives  a  warm 
domestic  radiance  fit  to  eat  by.  Mankind, 
you  would  have  thought,  might  have  re- 
mained content  with  what  Prometheus 
stole  for  them  and  not  gone  fishing  the  pro- 
found heaven  with  kites  to  catch  and  do- 
mesticate the  wildfire  of  the  storm.  Yet  here 
we  have  the  levin  brand  at  our  doors,  and 
it  is  proposed  that  we  should  henceforward 
take  our  walks  abroad  in  the  glare  of  per- 
manent lightning.  A  man  need  not  be  very 
superstitious  if  he  scruple  to  follow  his  pleas- 
ures by  the  light  of  the  Terror  that  Flieth, 
nor  very  epicurean  if  he  prefer  to  see  the 
face  of  beauty  more  becomingly  displayed. 
That  ugly  blinding  glare  may  not  improp- 
erly advertise  the  home  of  slanderous  Fi- 
garo, which  is  a  backshop  to  the  infernal  re- 
gions; but  where  soft  joys  prevail,  where 

255 


A  PLEA  FOR  GAS  LAMPS 

people  are  convoked  to  pleasure  and  the 
philosopher  looks  on  smiling  and  silent, 
where  love  and  laughter  and  deifying  wine 
abound,  there,  at  least,  let  the  old  mild  lustre 
shine  upon  the  ways  of  man. 


256 


